news story

News Story PRL 214

Syracuse Opens a New Attraction on Campus

By Paul Michie-Derrick

SYRACUSE, New York, September 12, 2019 --- Students are rushing to work out after Syracuse University finally opened the much anticipated Barnes Center on the first day of the fall semester. Once known as Archibold center, the Barnes Center brings a state of the art fitness experience that is encouraging their students to be active. The fitness center has many new attractions to bring students away from their beds and into the gym including a rock climbing room, a new and improved basketball gym with four courts, 4 floors of weight lifting machines, and a cafe with healthy smoothies that cannot be found anywhere else on campus.

“I think it’s really brought in a lot of kids that otherwise would have never gone to the gym” said Lindsay Godbout, a recently hired employee at the Barnes Center. “A lot of people get anxiety at the gym because they have to wait for a machine to open up, but the number of machines available makes it a lot easier for them to just work out and worry about themselves.” she added. Bringing a more pleasant and advanced experience to the gym is the goal of the Barnes Center, as exercise is proven to improve a student’s mental health and state of mind. A student no longer has to worry about a gym being too busy because of the sheer variety of machines.

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Photo taken by Paul Michie-Derrick at the Barnes Center on September 11th, 2019

Barnes also includes a freshly built court that has reinvigorated lovers of basketball and brought them to the courts. Because there are now 4 courts, not including the 3 courts at Flanagan, students are less worried about waiting for their turn to play, and are enjoying the game again.

The Barnes Center is also providing many jobs to students that otherwise would not have been available. “It’s been really nice working here” said Dhaval Sonavaria when asked about working at Barnes. “I always wanted to work at Flanagan but they never needed employees, so there were never many positions available. It’s really nice to work at a fitness center that pays pretty well.”

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he added.

Everything about this fitness center is state of the art, but they still have kinks to work out as a facility. A few lockers have had a propensity to get jammed. The lockers jam and lock students stuff in, slowing down their exit and taking away from the overall experience. Students are on a tight schedule, if someone leaves their backpack in their locker and cannot get their stuff out before their next class, that will obviously deter said student from returning. If Barnes center truly wants every student experience to be ideal, they will have to fix these lockers and make sure everything goes according to plan

With all this in mind the Barnes center has done an excellent job of renovating Archibold in a very short amount of time. It should be a staple of the university, increasing student activity for years to come.

(Word Count of Story: 507)

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Quoted people:

Lindsay Godbout (Ljgodbou@syr.eu)

Dhaval Sonavaria (Dhsonava@syr.edu)