They say you can’t tell a book by its cover, but what can you tell about a university by its recreation center? With all the known benefits that come with health and wellness, it’s tempting to make all kinds of conclusions by glimpsing at how campuses allow its students to stay healthy.
One universality about campus rec centers is that students always complain about them: hours of operation, bad equipment, crowds. There are good reasons for concern ““ after all, your student fees are going toward its operation, and thus it’s free to you. Even ardent John Wooden Center (JWC) lovers have surely overheard grumblings. But compared to local peer institutions, you’ll find we really don’t have much to complain about.
Comparing the main recreation centers of peer institutions is a tricky matter. For example, an urban campus is likely to have less space than a suburban college or university. Thus we’ll limit this comparison to “selective” Los Angeles institutions.
Another problem when trying to make comparisons is that many campuses have multiple recreation facilities, and the centrality of a “main” facility is a product of a campus’ satellite facilities (an argument USC would likely make). Some studies compare “total” recreation space (which in our case would include JWC, Sunset Canyon, the IM field, SAC, etc.), but for simplicity’s sake, we’ll stick to the “main” recreation centers.
Symbolically, it also makes for a more meaningful comparison to examine the utilitarian focal point of campus recreation. I’m talking about the big, on-campus facility, not the smaller weight rooms tucked away that only few know about (e.g. Fit Center South). Also excluded are the super-secret, athlete-only facilities such as our Acosta Center ““ a campus’s “main” rec center has be open to the masses, and open late.
That leaves us with a comparison of our beloved JWC versus USC’s Lyon Center, Loyola Marymount’s Burns Recreation Center, Occidental College’s Culley Fitness Center, Pepperdine’s Firestone Fieldhouse and Caltech’s Braun Athletic Center.
Before condemning this comparison as an exercise over a trivial bragging right, it’s worth understanding that building a better rec center is a well documented type of institutional one-upsmanship. According to the Daily Trojan, USC’s Lyon Center was built in 1989 explicitly “to have a weight room almost three times the size of UCLA’s John Wooden Center weight room.”
So to this under-hyped aspect of our crosstown rivalry, I say game on.
In terms of specs to compare, the obvious starting point is square footage, which is partially a product of campus population. In this case, we’ll stick to the undergraduate student population since undergrads tend to be more campus-based, and are thus the primary users of an institution’s main rec center. These two variables set up the all-important square-feet-per-student ratio, used as a comparison benchmark by recreation bodies such as the JWC Board of Governors.
A common gripe from students tends to be hours of operation, where the Lyon Center edges out the JWC by a mere 15 minutes per week. As expected, it appears the bigger universities can leverage their larger student populations to staff facilities longer ““ a finding made most evident by Occidental’s pathetic hours of operation.
Another variable to consider is institutional wealth ““ most commonly represented by endowment value. It makes sense that if you have more money, you can build a bigger facility that stays open longer.
The adjacent table omits Caltech and Pepperdine, since both campuses are classified as “suburban” in some profiles, but for those curious, Caltech’s and Pepperdine’s rec centers boast 4.05 and 1.43 square-feet-per-undergrad ratios and are open 111 and 108 hours per week, respectively.
One could also presume that campus size would logically affect rec center size. I’m deciding to forgo campus size since acreage (like the “total” versus “main” rec space discussion) becomes problematic once satellite campuses are taken into consideration (like USC’s Health Science Campus, or Pepperdine’s many campuses).
USC would likely point out its “compact” campus is further disadvantaged in this comparison, but don’t forget UCLA is also the smallest and most populous of all the UC campuses.
By the numbers then, our expansive JWC is looking pretty good ““ only LMU tops our square-feet-per-student ratio. As for poor, rich USC, the Lyon Center is clearly an Achilles heel.
Perhaps most intriguing however, is how well the JWC fares considering we’re the only public university in this comparison, a result that should please gym rats and regents alike.
Dare to compare other aspects of our campus? Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.