Via the Daily Wildcat:

The Campus Recreation Center isn’t just for students.

Campus Recreation is holding its first Wellness Week of the year to promote the Rec Center to faculty, staff, retirees and alumni. UA community members can work out for free from Sept. 9 to 12.

“Wellness Week is pretty much an outreach to the UA community,” said Chad Jeffry, marketing specialist for Campus Recreation. “Kind of as a little ‘try-out’ of the Rec Center.”

Students primarily use the Recreation Center though it is open to all UA community members.

“It’s about 5 percent right now that’s faculty and staff,” Jeffry said…

Nancy Rogers, coordinator of worksite wellness and health promotion for UA Life and Work Connection, said the Recreation Center is a useful resource for staff and faculty.

“We encourage people to use the Rec Center because they have state-of-the-art equipment and great personal trainers,” Rogers said.

The Recreation Center may help faculty and staff maintain a healthy lifestyle because they can work out before leaving campus…

Wolfgang Schmid, assistant research professor in Hydrology and Water Resources, uses the Rec Center about twice a week when he’s on campus.

“That’s at least a goal,” Schmid said. “I go whenever I want.”

Schmid purchased his membership through payroll deduction. He said the Rec Center is a beneficial resource even though many employees are busy.

“It’s hard if you’re in a full-time position,” Schmid said.

UA community members looking to use the Recreation Center can buy a semester pass or an annual pass. [emphasis mine]

Granted, only around 5% of the rec center users are faculty or staff, but the fact that they are given a choice of whether they want to opt-in is a luxury students are evidently not worthy of. Even more jarring is the growing body of evidence that the rec center was premised on a miscalculation of just how much student interest there would be in its LEED certified services. There is a standing presumption against special non-class fees, and instead of acknowledging as much and allowing students to opt-out of the particularly non-essential health/rec fee, the powers that be instead choose to sell the rec center as a community center where every step on the treadmill, every bench press rep, and every glance at one’s own reflection is a moment in “experiential learning.” That faculty, staff, and members of the community are not subject to such immature artifice and are given the opportunity to pay (or not) if they should so wish further confirms the student body’s status in the eyes of the administrators as a dim-witted cash cow ready to be milked.