Dear Editor:
For the past thirty-eight years I have been a regular user of the Mount Holyoke gym, on average three or four times a week. At the end of last week I emptied my locker and will not show my face in Kendall again.
This saddens me, because Kendall was the place where I met students I didn’t otherwise know, faculty from other departments, staff who have become longtime friends. (Hello, Brian). But the evacuation is necessary because the college has decided to impose a $150 annual fee for use of the facility. I can afford the fee, but cannot live with the realization that many members of the community cannot.
The decision to charge the fee was misguided in several senses of the term. It will raise a piddling amount of money while losing an ocean of good will. It will further isolate the Physical Education Department from the bulk of the faculty and staff. It will transform the new fitness center from a glorious new asset into a toxic center of abiding controversy. And the process by which it was approved is a textbook example of why the term administrative leadership is generally regarded as an oxymoron.
I would love to believe that somewhere in the upper reaches of the college a glimmer of common sense would get turned on like a light-bulb, the policy of charging such fees (i.e. parking is next) would be sent to a faculty committee, where it would be allowed to languish in obscurity. Thus far, however, all light switches remain off.
Sincerely,
Joseph J. Ellis
Ford Foundation Professor of History
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