By Charles Taylor
Staff Writer
The dull thud of weights being dropped on the rubber floor echoed about the mirrored room. Upbeat music buzzed through the overhead speakers.
The ambiance of the Brookhaven College weight room is now open to the campus community.
The fitness lab, located on the basement level of the T Building, can be used at various times each week by students, staff and faculty. The lab is an alternative to paying for a membership to a gym, such as 24 Hour Fitness or LA Fitness. Due to its location, the fitness lab remains an accidental secret on campus.
The weight room is not an exclusive club for students in athletics programs. It is open to all Brookhaven staff, faculty and students.
“A lot of students don’t realize there are three levels to the T Building,” Lynne Levesque, director of athletics and recreational programming at Brookhaven, said. “When you walk into the T Building, you’re on the second level. You have to actually walk down to the basement, and the fitness lab is down the hall- way. You can’t miss it once you’re there.”
The campus fitness lab offers state-of-the-art Cybex weight machines, treadmills, stairmasters, free weights, recumbent bikes and ellipticals. “It’s basically the same stuff you’ll find in a 24 Hour Fitness,” Levesque said.
Just because the T Building does not offer the same student-grabbing features as the S or L buildings does not mean its features are any less important. T Building’s mystique does not mean the weight room’s open hours need to remain an enigma. That is something the equipment coordinator, Jonathan Allen, hopes to change in the near future.
The reason more people don’t know about the gym and open hours is because the lack of advertising about it,” Allen said. The weight room usually has six to 10 people in it at one time, most being consistent users.
“I think everyone should just know we have open hours available for students, staff and faculty in order to give them a convenient place to achieve whatever physical fit- ness goals they have,” Allen said. “The hours are made in order to fit when students, staff and faculty would be available.”
Levesque said, “Certainly, the hours are not convenient for everybody, but we have to work around our instructional classes.”
Readers can call Levesque at 972-860-4121 or Allen at 972- 860-4127. They can be reached by email at LLevesque@ dcccd.edu and jdallen@dcccd. edu, respectively, to answer questions regarding the fitness lab and its hours of operation.
