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The Manhattan University Fitness Center was upgraded in 2017 with brand-new equipment.
ADVANTAGEFITNESS / COURTESY

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By Angelina Perez and Victoria Schiller, Arts and Entertainment Editor & Contributor

Student workers at the fitness center were met with an unpleasant email on Oct. 8, informing them of a reduction in their work hours due to the ongoing university budget cuts. 

Budget cuts have affected on campus organizations since the 2023 school year, and student worker hours are no exception. 

The email that the fitness center student workers received stated, “Due to budget cuts we will no longer be staffing the fitness center throughout the day. Instead we will have a 2-hour night shift that’s sole job is clean up duty.” 

Christopher Fonte, the assistant director of recreation and wellness on campus, explained to The Quadrangle as to what the changes mean for the future of the MU Fitness Center. 

“I’ll start by saying all around campus hours and work study jobs were cut entirely for all different departments,” Fonte said. “It just happens that the fitness center workers is a student worker position that everybody could see that there’s nobody in [the gym]. Some jobs were even cut all around campus and we’re fortunate enough to keep fitness center workers to some capacity. That’s just a part of the budget cuts that have been coming through the past year or two.” 

Depending on their availability, some students were working 10-14 hours a week prior to the budget cuts. Although several students came to Fonte with concerns about the changes, he was enthusiastic to share that there are more opportunities for students to get extra hours, especially when it comes to student engagement. 

“I have been trying to get student workers all of those hours back, just in other capacities,” Fonte said. “I already spoke to other departments and they said, ‘give them my email and tell them to reach out to me.’ Family weekend as well as intramural sports is another way we grab students to come and work. As you see on MC Announcements, this office has so many events, so there’s always opportunities for those students to get those hours.”

 Fonte explained how these changes were announced to the student workers with what he describes as enough time for them to decide whether or not they wanted to continue working at the center.  

“It was a slowly phased in process,” Fonte said. “We basically gave them a warning like, ‘hey, these hours are getting cut. If you no longer want to work in the fitness center, no worries.’ They were aware months prior to it, and this is the first full week that the new fitness center procedures and hours are starting, but for the last month or two, they’ve been aware that things are going on and that changes are going to be made. But it does suck getting an abrupt email like that from there.” 

As students are used to swiping into the gym while being greeted by a worker’s friendly face as well as having staff members present in case of an emergency, The Quadrangle asked Fonte what the fitness center will look like with fewer workers present. 

“It’s basically the same system as that of a hotel fitness center,” Fonte said. “You swipe in, you go in, and it is a flowing fitness center that happens. We also have signs around the fitness center and I’m working on getting more signs as well. In case of any injuries or problems we are encouraging students to please call Campus Safety immediately.”

Hannah Burgoyne, a senior psychology and Spanish major with a business minor, has been working at the fitness center for the past four years, where she has witnessed the center’s student workers transition from a close community to not seeing each other anymore. 

“In earlier years working in the fitness center, I’ve worked and met some of my really good friends, and it used to be a very close knit group of people who would see each other socially, and hang out,” Burgoyne said. “Now, because we don’t work with anybody and we’re just there by ourselves, the community doesn’t exist anymore.”

With the lack of staff members present, safety and cleanliness throughout the day is now in the hands of the students before the workers clock in for their two hour night shift.  

“My freshman and sophomore year, there was always two staff members working at a time,” Burgoyne said. “There was somebody in the back monitoring the weights and then there was somebody up front making sure those who were coming in were students. At the end of my sophomore and during my junior year, we had just the person at the front desk monitoring who was coming in and out, helping people when they had questions, machine maintenance, cleaning and keeping an overall watch to make sure nobody hurt themselves.” 

While Fonte has expressed his department’s reach out to others to help student employees continue employment, Burgoyne expresses the convenience and comfortability her coworkers and herself have at the fitness center. 

“I don’t know what I am going to do in regards of employment to be honest,” Burgoyne said. “I want to work somewhere else on campus if I can, but also I don’t think that there’s anything really on campus that is more convenient for all of us, given our schedules and stuff. I feel like for this semester, I’m at a loose end.” 

Students were able to lean on the workers to help guide them during their workouts and give them peace of mind.

“A lot of students ask [the fitness center student workers] for advice on workouts or spotting and stuff like that that they might not feel comfortable asking just any other student they find in the gym,” Burgoyne said. “In regards to safety and cleanliness, it’s really important that you have at least somebody there because most of the time people aren’t cleaning up after themselves in there which can cause an injury. Because of this situation, students will no longer have a face that welcomes them anymore, and for some people that might be the only interaction they have with somebody in their day.”