On a warm, rainy Wednesday in April, MSU finally unveiled its brand-new recreational center, aptly named the Student Recreation and Wellness Center (SRWC).
With an amazingly creative name and brand-new facilities, MSU students were very excited about its opening. So excited, in fact, that students even camped outside the facility waiting for it to open.
We here at The Nut sent in one of our best reporters to get the scoop on the line and how people were doing during the campout.
Almost 500 people had set up tents and beds just to ensure a spot inside the gym, bringing water bottles to drink out of and then later to pee in.
John Clarkson, an MSU Junior, was right at the front. “I’ve been here since February. I had to make sure that I could snag a lat pulldown machine,” Clarkson said. “[insert funny statement]”
We also heard Ann Marie’s, an MSU Sophomore, experience. “At one point,” she said, “I got so hungry I grabbed someone’s discarded combo to eat. But turns out a goose also had the same idea, so we ended up fighting over the scraps.” Ann Marie told us she had no regrets: “That’s just the extent some of us will go to get into this gym.” At the time of our interview, Ann Marie had been in line for ten minutes.
We wanted to see what $200 million and [x] months of construction meant for MSU students. Thankfully, the SRWC staff gave us an inside tour of the building.
We found that $70 million went into the new ID scanners: if you’ve been on the NYC subway, you’ll be really familiar with them. So familiar, in fact, you may accidentally hop over these, too, as many people did on the opening day. “It’s almost second nature, man,” said Vincenzo Linguini, an MSU freshman who has lived in NYC for 3 months.
The remaining $130 million went toward equipment and new facilities, such as the rock climbing wall, bouldering wall, and other types of walls.
Sam Matthews, an MSU Sophomore who works at the SRWC, told us about his first shift. “Once it hit 4:00, we had hundreds of kids storming in. I think I saw my manager get trampled. Rest In Peace, Jim.”
Sadly, the Nut could not get into the SRWC that day as we were stuck at the end of the line, but we got a tour the next day.
Matthews told us how students ran to see where their tuition money went. Some examined the rock climbing walls, while others took a cautious peek at the other walls. Others got in their pre-workout by sprinting to stationary bikes and treadmills, and the rest went to finally get their back workout in, only to find that the lat pulldown machine was already taken.
Overall, the SRWC seems to be a great addition to MSU. Maybe now people will finally want to live in the South Neighborhood.
