Improve the MAC; K-School Out

If U.S. News and World Report took the quality of physical fitness resources into account in its ranking of the nation's top colleges, one gets the feeling that Harvard might slip into the second or third quartile. And with the Kennedy School absorbing the Malkin Athletic Center (MAC) fees into the tuition of students next year, effectively broadening the MAC access to all K-Schoolers, undergraduates can expect to have even more trouble keeping themselves in shape. Harvard has a responsibility to provide its students with the basic tools to remain physically fit, but the resources currently available are far from adequate.

The Kennedy School's recent decision to include in next year's tuition price the $90 some of its students currently pay to use the FAS-owned MAC, a move which will open up the fitness facility to all K-School students, will no doubt make the odiferous and moist work-out areas even more overcrowded. We are disheartened by this step, but it is yet one more reminder of the facility's short-comings. As such, it only serves to underscore the fact that the MAC has, for some time, been an embarrassment to Harvard.

A university of Harvard's size and endowment should have one of the top gyms in the nation, but instead, the MAC languishes as an artifact of the past. The sheer paucity of cardiovascular and weight-lifting equipment available makes the completion of a full workout during peak hours virtually impossible. Moreover, the crowded basketball courts must be shared with three varsity teams. If the MAC added five more Stairmasters, five more stationary bicycles, more indoor basketball courts, and two more bench presses, there would be no need to worry that the new facilities would suffer from lack of use.

The narrow range of equipment offered at the MAC is equally glaring--it offers severely outmoded stationary bicycles, a sparse range of ancient nautilus-type machines, and not a single treadmill. As John F. Kennedy '40 was inclined to say, we can do better.

And perhaps we will. Indeed, we are hopeful that the $100,000 recently donated for the purchasing of new equipment will be supplemented by College funding to make it easier for students to maintain their fitness. The donation money can be seen only as a starter-fund for the kind of refurbishments and modernizations that are needed to bring the MAC into the 20th century, let alone the 21st.