After a sleepless night of studying and a caffeinated day of classes, you bundle up your willpower and drag yourself to the Athletic Complex. After passing through new glass-paneled turnstiles that inspire vague associations of Mr. Spock and dystopian fiction, you find yourself waiting in line for a treadmill that may or may not work, flipping through an issue of US Weekly from two weeks ago and thinking about how you could be more productive if only you had joined Bally’s like your roommates did.

This isn’t the scene we voted for almost two years ago, when then-Student Union President Neil Patel drove an initiative to improve the workout facilities at the AC. Block funding was allocated to the complex in 2008 with a threefold initiative: to eliminate fees, extend hours and improve weight room equipment.

While these goals have been accomplished—albeit minimally—the shiny new turnstiles seem to be a waste of the funding allocated to the AC. In a recent interview, Patel said that his intention was “that any additional funding would go towards improving the general AC experience, including the McWilliams Fitness Center.” The money spent on turnstiles could have been better spent on improving and expanding the currently outdated and sparse array of equipment in the McWilliams Fitness Center.

“We felt that if facilities were better lit, more attractive [and] more accessible, more students would use them,” Patel said. New turnstiles negligibly make the AC more accessible in that they eliminate congestion at the entrance. But the problems of limited accessibility, poor lighting and unattractiveness remain.

Wash. U.’s peer institutions, such as Penn, Northwestern and Dartmouth—which, admittedly, have Division I athletics—have much more attractive and up-to-date fitness facilities than ours, and this discrepancy is a potential deterrent for prospective students.

Ironically, it seems that the University has made changes to facilities dedicated to athletes but not to those that serve the student body at large. The administration has invested in new backboards, shot clocks and scoreboards for the basketball court and an addition to the Francis Field press box. The administration should take this as a starting point to make improvements to the workout facilities that are open to all.

When coupled with the reduced capacity of the South 40 Fitness Center due to current renovations to South 40 House, lines at the AC are particularly troubling. The University should take strides to ensure that students need not resort to joining an outside gym. Moreover, the University’s 10-year plan to build a new facility has been put on a backburner given the delay of all its construction projects, and the need for improvements to the existing facilities has gained new prominence.

Recreational exercise forms part of a well-rounded college lifestyle—something Wash. U. has long sought to promote with programs such as intramural sports. Healthy bodies often accompany healthy minds, and when students have healthy bodies, they can better accomplish the other things they need to do. We don’t need Olympic-sized swimming pools or built-in television screens on the treadmills we use. What we could use, however, is an athletics facility that is up to date and encourages us to go.