By Brandon Davis
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.
Has student government at the University of Louisville become a farce?
Probably most of the people reading this letter have little to no idea what SGA at U of L actually does. This is sad since SGA has a budget of more than $600,000 per year.
That equals about 160 full-time undergraduate students paying in-state tuition to cover the SGA budget, not including any over-realization or carry-over funds.
It was my favorite time of year: the squirrels are getting fat, the mosquitoes are dead and it's not cold enough to need a big, bulky coat.
It was Election Day and Barack Obama was announced as the next U.S. president.
A bunch of friends and I decided to go out and celebrate. Inevitably, we found ourselves on Bardstown Road (Highlands) until late in the night. Amongst the haze of hookah smoke and the sounds of drunken karaoke, my buddy and I decided to go out for a walk.
Uprooted with ineffective policies, poor communication efforts and dwindling student involvement, the Student Government Association at the University of Louisville often struggles to balance a disconnect with the student body while upholding their duties as campus leaders.
University of Louisville, like many other institutions, has its fair share of pluses and minuses. But we are here to show that for each positive, there is a negative. We as a staff and students can relate and feel your pain.
At press time, the attendance at two of the four University of Louisville's Meal Plan Waiver Advisory meetings had less than 10 participants, which included Student Government Association's Services Vice President Dani Smith and a few of her constituents.
In addition to the meetings held on Thursday, Friday and yesterday, one more is being held this evening.
For about the twelfth time today my wireless Internet refuses to connect.
"ULSECURE connection has been cancelled," my computer informs me. This is something that has become a daily routine. Again, I attempt to connect to the Internet. (I get connected) after ten minutes of waiting and screaming countless words of profanity. In reality, this just adds to the list of things that I have gotten for my tuition money at U of L: a bunch of things that don't work so well.
I was highly dissatisfied with the November 11th school paper. Not one
mention of our service members in the United States military or the ROTC
and on Veterans Day.
It's quite amazing how colleges will nickel and dime students for everything.
But here's something even more astonishing: out-of-state students who are admitted to University of Louisville's School of Dentistry program are required to sign on as out-of-state students for the full four years. Even if they uproot their family or only themselves from say New Mexico, and live in Louisville the full four years, they are required to remain classified as out-of-state students for their whole stay.
There she was, munching on a green apple while walking down the hallway and I couldn't help but think "That's how she stays so pretty and slim," would come to my mind.
Chats here and there near our lockers, exchanging cameras to take pictures at prom and being at the football games, yelling and hugging after our team won.
Starting at the bottom of the chain is definitely difficult. The chance that you'll get lost on campus runs high on the list of worries. As my first semester comes to a close, I have discovered some of the many pros and cons of the freshmen life.
