I’m responding to the letter that was written on April 5 regarding SARC’s decision to move the weight equipment from the racquetball court back to the weight room. Neither I nor SARC has been unresponsive to what NIU students think. The survey conducted by OCR in the weight room and racquetball court at the time of the move was discovered to be a highly biased survey. When I went to fill the survey out, I received pressure from weight lifters as to how to respond to the survey. Upon talking with them, one of them told me, “we’ve been stuffing the ballot boxes for the last hour” (in favor of the equipment move). This incident convinced SARC that the survey was invalid.

SARC has been highly responsive to the students’ needs, especially on the weight room issue. SARC performed a survey in the weight room last semester and found the two most common complaints to be lack of space and the music. SARC passed a policy allowing for the weight room supervisor to bring an OCR-owned music box into the weight room; a solution which will be much more satisfactory to weightlifters than converting a racquetball court into a hydrafitness room.

Huda Scheidelman

Student Association recreation adviser