Opinion

Poor gym facilities in opposition to Park’s core values

Skyler Jensen Editor-in-Chief

Healthy is a word that sparks many images. For most, including myself, a healthy person is someone who eats fruits and vegetables and exercises on a regular basis.

However, at Park University, there is a significant hindrance to students’ access to a healthy life.

There are two main gyms on the Parkville campus. One is in the Underground and the other is in Labor Hall. However, only athletes can access the gym in the Underground and any student can access the gym in Labor Hall.

The one in the Underground is considered to be the nicest gym on campus with updated equipment and a fully furnished gym. The other facilities are lackluster in

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In Labor Hall, the gym is outdated and lacks quality equipment. There are no barbells, and the mechanical equipment, including the treadmills, frequently fails. In spring 2021, most of the treadmills broke until there was only one left for students to use for several weeks.

This is disappointing because there are many benefits to having an adequate exercise facility.

First and foremost, exercising can help improve people’s physical health. Consistent exercise can reduce a person’s risk of a heart attack as well as lower the risk of type two diabetes and some cancers. The risk of high blood pressure is also reduced by regular exercise. It can also strengthen people’s bones, muscles and joints, according to the CDC.

Improving physical health can lead to a longer life. It can also decrease stresses of people’s lives. Many people with these health issues have to worry about paying for their medical appointments and medicine. These issues often become lifelong worries as the health issue are typically permanent.

In addition to physical health, mental health can also be improved with exercise. Exercise can boost a person’s energy and improve their mood. It can also help to increase sleep and reduce anxiety and depression, according to the CDC.

This means it may also help with small issues, such as anxiety students have or stress from classes. In a meta-analysis by Steven J. Petruzzello and Allyson G. Box in Kinesiology Review, exercise was highlighted as a way to facilitate better mental health among college students. Even beyond the specific stressors of college, a lot of students also have larger mental health issues that could benefit from the effects of regular exercise.

Mental health has become a large issue in society. The stigma surrounding it has lessened and more people are speaking out about their own difficulties with mental illnesses. Because so many people have concerns with their mental health, it should be a greater concern to Park University.

One way to show that concern would be to upgrade the exercise facility for all students.

Non-student-athletes do not get to benefit from the same mental and physical health benefits that student-athletes get to experience.

If these students who are not officially Park athletes want to live a fully healthy lifestyle, then they have to pay for access to other gyms in the area. Even a reduced rate to the YMCA may still be too large of an expense for a college student to pay. They may not have the funds for both their education and their health. It also makes it less convenient for students to have to go off campus in order to be active.

Park University has multiple core values. Two of which are inclusivity and social responsibility. To demonstrate their dedication to those values, Park should improve the gyms that all students are allowed access to in order to improve the quality of life for their students.

PHOTO/Skyler Jensen On a weekday in October 2021, Labor Hall sits empty with outdated equipment. All Park University students are welcome to use this gym during its operating hours.

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OPINION

January 28, 2022 Holding on to memories of Chinese New Year

Yi Li Editor

Spring Festival has always been the most important festival in the hearts of Chinese people.

This year it will occur on Feb. 1. Every Spring Festival, we will eat a family reunion dinner, set off firecrackers, paste Spring Festival couplets around, receive New Year gift-money and more. In short, there are many customs to do with the family as they say goodbye and welcome the New Year. Many in the U.S. know Spring Festival as Chinese New Year.

For international students from China, Chinese New Year is the most difficult day, because they cannot feel the same excitement. There is an old Chinese poem that goes: “Alone, a lonely stranger in a foreign land, I pine for kinsfolk doubly on a holiday.”

As an overseas student, I have empathy for this sentence, which has been passed down for thousands of years.

They say wherever there are Chinese people, there is Spring Festival. Every Lunar New Year, there are always a group of overseas wanderers who get together to hold the Spring Festival Gala, make dumplings and eat hot pot. In 2021, there was estimated to be more than one million Chinese students studying in the world, and most of them have not returned home since the day they left.

But no matter where you are, the Chinese New Year is always a wanderer’s obsession. On the day of the Spring Festival, they will wear festive red clothes and paste the character “fu,” which means “blessing,” upside down on the dormitory door to introduce various Spring Festival customs to foreign friends. Spring Festival Gala gradually waned in China, but in foreign countries we have pinpointed the time to see the Spring Festival Gala. It seems that the Spring Festival in foreign countries is more active than in China.

Whenever some Chinese friends ask me if I want to go home for the Spring Festival, I can only reply that I cannot, because I do not have a break, and I have classes to attend at school. And then they say, “Do you want to go home?” I always have to send some laughing emojis. They laugh and say, “Oh, who doesn’t want to go home for the Spring Festival?” That is correct, who does not want to go home for Chinese New Year?

What they do not know is that I have not been home for the Chinese New Year in four years. When I recall Chinese New Year in the United States, many assignments stress me out. I usually find a quiet corner of the library, then dive into a 20page assignment. If I am tired of writing a lit review, then I go to Starbucks for coffee. When I came across a Taiwanese professor, the other side said kindly: “Happy Chinese New Year.” It warmed my heart.

There was a year, I just finished a midterm project, and my mother called me on a video call. In the video, my relatives are sitting around a table. I rub my eyes all night long and say Happy New Year to all my relatives. After the video ended, I opened the family chat and found that the screen was full of New Year wishes. So I scoured moments to see if everyone was as miserable as me, only to find that the screen was full of hot pot and photos of the New Year’s Eve dinner.

Ever since then I have warned myself never to open Chinese social media during Chinese New Year.

In the last video chat with my father, I said, “I haven’t been home for Chinese New Year in a long time.” He did not answer immediately, I wondered if he was trying to remember how I had spent the Spring Festival away from home in the last couple of years. A few seconds later, he said only one word “yeah.”

When I was a child during the Spring Festival, the family celebrated with fireworks, and when eating dinner on New Year’s Eve, I would hurriedly pick up a few mouthfuls and run downstairs to put fireworks outside. I always lit multiple fireworks at the same time, watching them explode in the sky at the same time. This was my limited happiness as a child.

I lit all the fireworks then came home just to catch up with the Spring Festival skits. I would use my hands to rub my frozen red ears, then grab some New Year’s goods, like sunflower seeds and peanuts, eating and laughing while watching the skits.

Unfortunately, the Spring Festival Gala became increasingly boring every year, and everyone did not watch TV. The memories of childhood Spring Festival may only be left with fireworks.

“Did you also buy a lot of fireworks this year?” I asked. “We haven’t allowed fireworks for years, and now they’re all gone,” my dad said.

I checked my syllabus: there are two essays and a project due on New Year’s Eve. If nothing goes wrong, I should find a quiet corner on campus to write assignments and meet deadlines.

I hope that in 2022, we can all be safe and prosperous, everything goes well, we can harvest and still have something to look forward to. Happy Chinese New Year.