Stanford Athletics - Physical Education, Recreation, and Wellness

September 26, 2008

Stanford University is home to the finest - and largest - competitive aquatic facilities in the nation. However, to date its provision of those facilities for recreation swim have been barely adequate to meet the needs of a large and vibrant rec swim community.

Nonetheless, for the Fall quarter the University has chosen to make further significant scheduling cuts in rec swim provision. As a result of these cuts, going forward Stanford University will rank last or near last, by every conceivable metric, in recreation swim provision among the top 10 research universities in the nation (see rankings below).

The most significant scheduling change has been the shift of evening swim hours from the Avery facility to Roble, a 25 yard, 5 lane pool with less than a quarter of the previous capacity. With this change, Stanford's provision of rec swim during all off-business hours (6am-9am, 6pm-11pm) will be less than half of that offered by the next lowest top 10 research university (see rankings below). These cuts are particularly painful to members of the Stanford community who work to keep the University running and hence are occupied during business hours staff, faculty, and graduate students.

For many of us, lap swimming and aqua jogging are our principal means for maintaining physical wellness. We rely heavily on rec swim because other forms of high-impact cardiovascular exercise are often not an option for a variety of reasons, including injuries, chronic physical conditions, and age. Given Stanford's stated commitment to recreation and wellness, we are puzzled and deeply dismayed by the University's self evident disregard for our needs. That Stanford cannot budget sufficient resources out of its 17.2 billion dollar endowment to offer rec swim that is even minimally comparable with its peer institutions is not only deeply frustrating it is deeply embarrassing.

As members of the rec swim community, we strongly urge the University to reconsider its recent scheduling decisions, and provide facilities that do basic justice to its recreation and wellness responsibilities. We work hard to make Stanford one of the world's top research institutions, and we deserve better.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned



RANKINGS

Weekday Available Rec Swim Hours [1]
1 MIT 17.0
2 Harvard 15.5
3 UPenn 14.0
4 Princeton 12.3
5 Yale 12.0
6 CalTech 11.0
7 Duke 10.5
8 UChicago 10.0
9 Columbia 8.5
10 Stanford 7.5

Weekday Meter-Lane Hours [2]
1 MIT 5701.3
2 UPenn 5600.0
3 Harvard 4812.0
4 UChicago 4500.0
5 CalTech 4023.4
6 Princeton 3362.3
7 Yale 2774.3
8 Columbia 2682.2
9 Stanford 2514.4
10 Duke 1874.5

Weekday Meter-Lane Hours Per Capita [3]
1 CalTech 1.89
2 MIT 0.56
3 Princeton 0.46
4 UChicago 0.36
5 UPenn 0.30
6 Harvard 0.25
7 Yale 0.24
8 Duke 0.14
9 Stanford 0.13
10 Columbia 0.11

[1] Total hours per day during which some venue for recreation swim is available. So for example, if two separate pools offer swim from 9am-10am, this is counted as one available hour.
[2] For each hour in the day and for each university-wide pool, Meter Length * Lanes Available is computed. The sum is then taken over pools and hours. This is a measure of the total time-space capacity in a single business day.
[3] The value in [2] divided by the total size of the student body, as reported by US News. It is implicitly assumed that the total size of the University community is proportional to this number.

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OFF-BUSINESS HOURS RANKINGS (Off-Business defined to be 6am-9am + 6pm-11pm)


Weekday Available Rec Swim Hours, Off-Business
1 MIT 8.0
2 UPenn 8.0
3 Harvard 6.5
4 UChicago 6.0
5 Princeton 5.8
6 Columbia 5.5
7 Duke 5.0
8 CalTech 4.0
9 Yale 4.0
10 Stanford 3.5

Weekday Meter-Lane Hours, Off-Business
1 UPenn 3200.00
2 UChicago 2700.00
3 MIT 2554.99
4 Princeton 1845.09
5 Harvard 1714.50
6 CalTech 1463.04
7 Columbia 1249.68
8 Duke 1005.84
9 Yale 774.32
10 Stanford 400.05

Weekday Meter-Lane Hours Per Capita, Off-Business (x100)
1 CalTech 68.59
2 Princeton 25.16
3 MIT 25.00
4 UChicago 21.89
5 UPenn 16.92
6 Harvard 8.90
7 Duke 7.40
8 Yale 6.76
9 Columbia 5.52
10 Stanford 2.02

For source data, see http://www.stanford.edu/~ahirsch/PoolRankingsData.xls