In response to the staff editorial in last week’s Lawrentian titled “A new Direction?”, I must say I definitely disagreed with the article. I am in 100% full support of President Rogers’ administrative goals. I feel his objectives are exactly what this campus needs, not some chiropractor coaching conservatory students on how to take care of their bodies.
I’m a connie as well as an athlete here at Lawrence, so I feel I can speak on behalf of both areas of our campus. Our athletic facilities here at Lawrence are very poor and I often hear complaints from everyone on campus (not just competing athletes) saying that the facilities could be much improved. So many great student-athletes are turned off from our school because of our facilities and end up going to other schools in our conference like Illinois College, Carroll College, and Grinell College [sic], who all have or are in the process of building up-to-date athletic facilities. We are losing quality athletes who could really take our athletics to a whole new level.
To put in perspective of our athletic facilities here, I would say it would be like having about ten practice rooms to share out of all of us musicians, instead of the I don’t know how many we have. Imagine having ten practice rooms, and bad ones at that? It couldn’t happen. And yet the athletic department has to deal with these conditions on a day to day basis. By building new athletic facilities or improving the existing ones would actually decrease the number of injuries over at the con. If people started to work out and become aware of their bodies and gain more flexibility etc., they could fix some of the problems that the chiropractor would have pointed out to them. The chiropractor is a good idea, but a temporary one that overshadows the larger problem at hand. And the great thing about better athletic facilities is everyone on campus benefits from this, not the 200-300 musicians who would see the “part-time” chiropractor.
President Rogers’ other goals of the movies on campus as well as Viking Gold in the VR are great ideas and also should definitely be put into action. Our campus needs changes like this, it will only improve our campus and get it closer to a well-rounded campus, something I think is very important to the overall college experience.-Joe Loehnis, Golfer and Cellist
Letter to the editor
