A common dilemma many students face when beginning their college careers out of high school is figuring out how to stay in shape while adjusting to a new schedule.
The Student Activities Center’s fitness center offers a variety of different activities to help keep students in shape, including an accessible weight room stocked with treadmills, free and machine weight systems and other cardiovascular equipment.
“In the Louisville Metropolitan area, this [SAC] is one of the best facilities around,” Ken Carey, gym employee, said. “The vast array of equipment and stuff that this facility has here along with the facilities at the Crawford and Humana, it can’t be beat.”
The SAC is open weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. and is free with an active student ID.
The SAC fitness center also provides five racquetball courts, two squash courts and complete locker room facilities along with four multi-purpose gym floors which are used for basketball, volleyball and badminton.
“It offers pretty much everything you want,” Greg Welsh, junior nursing major, said. “They have a gym, basketball courts, racquetball and they’re always open when you need them to be so it’s pretty convenient.”
For those looking to keep themselves occupied in some competitive form or just looking for a way to blow off some steam without all the sweat, the Cardinal Corner might be the answer. Also located in the SAC, the Cardinal Corner provides an assortment of free games for students to compete in, including pool, ping-pong, air hockey and foosball.
The Ralph Wright Natatorium, located on the corner of Warnock Ave. and Floyd St., is one for the newest facilities on campus and allows students a chance to swim in an Olympic-size pool. The Natatorium is also home to the U of L’s men’s and women’s swim teams and is complete with an eight-lane, 50 meter competition pool with depth ranging from four feet, six inches to 18 feet.
“It’s really a great facility,” Matt Blanford, graduate student and lifeguard, said. “It’s brand new and I think students are surprised when they find out that it’s even here and they’re allowed to use it for free.”
The Natatorium is open from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and is also open at various times on weekends.
The Humana Gym is another facility available for students looking to work out. Located on Bradley Ave. and Eastern Pkwy., the Humana Gym offers complete weight and cardiovascular rooms, dry heat saunas and gym floors are available when not used for club practices. Free for students, the Humana Gym is open from 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
U of L also offers a variety of different sports clubs and intramural league sports which provide students looking for a more structured plan to help maintain a healthy lifestyle, a solid solution while satisfying their competitive juices.
With clubs like badminton, fencing, gymnastics and many others, students are given the opportunity to compete while receiving a chance to learn a new sport or continuing to play a familiar one. There are also many different intramural league sports students can play including football, basketball, and soccer.
When walking on campus late at night, Anna Villereal said she finds safety in numbers. "There are several nights of the week when I have to walk back to my dorm really late," said Villereal, a freshman fine arts major. "I found the best way to deal with this is to walk back with people going to or where I am, this way I feel a little more protected." This year the Department of Public Safety has changed its emergency number to 911. For students like Villereal, who fear an attack while walking on campus, this change may be of little use – it only works for landline phones on campus.
With enrollment continuing to go up at the University of Louisville, students might soon be having classes in trailers to compensate for the lack of available space. "The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education commissioned a space study last year of all public universities," Provost Shirley Willihnganz said. "While space is at a premium everywhere, only two universities, U of L and Northern Kentucky, were deemed out of space.
Jessica Amin has had to resort to strange survival tactics in a week without power. The senior child psychology major found herself volunteering in Anne Northup's campaign office on Wednesday for Internet access in order to finish a biology paper. "Literally every single person I knew didn't have power," Amin said. "I had to come into the office to volunteer because even the two libraries by my house were without power."
In his annual State of the University Address this past Tuesday, University of Louisville President James Ramsey emphasized the achievements and obstacles facing the university, including student-related issues such as housing and food and information technology services.
On June 20, 2008, federal investigators marched into the College of Education and Human Development, emerging hours later with boxes of information pertaining to the activities of former CEHD Dean Robert Felner. Felner is now under federal investigation for allegedly misappropriating approximately $694,000 of the college's federal grant money.
The budget crisis at the University of Louisville has claimed yet another victim. Starting this semester, any non-Health and Sport Sciences major enrolled in HSS activity classes will be charged a $75 fee, which will be added to their tuition bill. According to Dr. David Britt, chair of the HSS department, the new fee has been implemented to produce more revenue in light of budget cuts.
As child-care gets harder to find and even more difficult to afford, some have found hope in the new child care facility coming near the University of Louisville's Belknap campus – like junior biology major Alex Rodriguez, who was fortunate enough to secure a spot for his two year old daughter.
For Rachel Noble, budget cuts at the University of Louisville represent more than just dollars in the minus column. They represent a new burden for the next generation of U of L students to shoulder. "Incoming students are very concerned about the budget situation," said Noble, a junior communication major, who added that her experience with the student orientation staff at this year's freshman orientation allowed her to better understand the needs of the incoming students. "At this point, they are going to be at the university the longest and they are already concerned with things like ‘how am I going to work and go to school and get things paid for?'"
A week after arriving at the University of Louisville, freshmen Britney Bent and Jessica Buckner packed up their belongings to prepare for a move to West Hall. Bent's pillows and neatly folded blankets were laid on a bare navy blue mattress. Buckner's plastics totes towered in the corner of their room. While others were getting adjusted to their dorm rooms, Bent and Buckner were living in the third floor study lounge of Threlkeld Hall.
For students like Anthony Smith, a way around the spike in gas prices is almost impossible to find. "I have to go home almost every weekend for some reason or another," Anthony Smith, a sophomore justice administration major, said. "The gas prices are killing me." This summer has seen Kentucky gas prices rise to an all-time high. Peaking at $4.27 a gallon on June 30, the average price of gas in Kentucky has since dropped to $3.65 a gallon.
