For the five years that I’ve been attending NIU, I’ve taken advantage of the pools we have. I usually choose Anderson because it’s supposed to have the most accessible hours to me. But I can’t count how many times I’ve shown up to the Anderson pool during its posted hours to find the pool closed.

This is an incredible disservice to students.

I have a few suggestions: Staff your lifeguards better. If they’re not willing to work, then just close the pool altogether. It’s no use broadcasting you have a pool if you’re just going to keep it behind locked doors. Another thing is keep up-to-date pool access hours on your Web site so people can see whether the pools are actually open or not instead of us finding out when we get there.

Another issue is which doors at Anderson are left open for pool access. Every time I go there it’s a different door, never the same. Anderson is a large building and what adds to the frustration of the sporadic pool hours is never knowing which door you need to use to get in.

If you can fund and operate the Rec Center, you can operate the pools properly as well. It’s what part of my tuition goes to, by the way, so why give me one more reason to think my money is going nowhere here?

I implore you, Aquatics Department, to get your act together and keep the pools open during the posted hours you chose. If this is not possible then close the pool to the public.