Women Only Hours are Unfair

Don’t get me wrong. I would firmly support a policy that upholds women’s equality and helps create a more inclusionary environment for people of all faiths. But administering women-only hours in the Quandrangle Recreational Athletic Center (QRAC) does neither. Instead, the new policy creates an ineffective mandate that is unfair to Harvard’s minority Quad population: It is an unreasonable policy that is unjust to men and useless to women.

Since this new policy’s inception, the number of women using the facility has not increased nor has there been an apparent rise in the number of religious users. The QRAC is underutilized as it is. During women only hours there are usually only two or three women there, leaving essentially the entire facility unused. Even if there is no one on the basketball court or the anaerobic machine area, which is generally the case during women’s hours, the QRAC still restricts access.

Harvard’s new policy of having women-only hours is unfair to those who live in the Quad, where a fifth of Harvard’s undergraduate population has access to only one nearby gym—the QRAC. Other students at Harvard have access to at least two—Hemenway and the Malkin Athletic Center—both of which are far superior to the QRAC. Yet, Harvard decided three weeks ago, in a process that was utterly lacking in transparency, to limit what little Quadlings have by mandating that men not be allowed to use the facility during a range of hours from eight to ten, Tuesday and Thursday mornings and from three to five on Monday afternoons.

Rather than a genuine attempt to provide comfortable workout hours for women and religious observers who might be uncomfortable working out around men, this policy beats around the bush by offering the least utilized and the most inconvenient hours and gym space. No one benefits from women’s only hours. They may be symbolic, but fail in every practical respect. However, there are losers: The new policy takes away from those who really appreciate working out during those hours when the QRAC is now closed to men.

It is especially the morning hours from eight to ten that are so crucial to those who live in the Quad. The whole reason for having a nearby gym is that you can use it whenever you are home. Morning hours, like evening hours, are important because those are times when students who live in the Quad are actually there. Morning hours are also the least convenient hours in the day to draw women and religious minorities from river houses that the new policy is supposedly aimed at benefiting. Why make a trek at eight in the morning when there’s a gym right outside your doorstep? Well, for us Quadlings, the QRAC is right outside our doorstep.

Not only are Harvard’s policies harsh on those who live in the Quad, they are unfair to men. It might be possible to make a case for these hours were they actually advantageous for anyone. However, seeing how the policies are of effectively little use to anyone their only real effect is to discriminate against men who keep regular morning or afternoon workout hours. This seems fundamentally unfair to me.

Inevitably, someone loses a little bit either way. Either women and religious minorities who feel uneasy or intimidated working out around men are deterred from going to the gym, or Quadlings face restricted hours when they can work out. The policy as it now stands, however, is lose-lose. It’s all downsides. Men in the Quad have to deal with restricted hours, and the women only hours are so impractical that they don’t actually encourage anyone to work out who wouldn’t otherwise.

If Harvard truly wanted to support women by designating specific gym space for them, it would do so by mandating hours and location in a way that were actually practical. But rightfully seeing that inconveniencing a significant portion of its campus was not a viable option, Harvard has instead decided to burden a minority in the Quad.

Whoever was in charge of enacting this policy appears to have totally ignored practical implications. The policy was written as a concession to minority groups on campus, and it hardly pretends to be anything more. Yet, this is not sufficient justification for prolonging it. Especially when you consider that women only hours have had the unintended consequence of disturbing the QRAC’s frequent male patrons in an unfair and impractical way.

Harvard needs to reexamine its women only hours at the QRAC. They may be symbolic, but do nothing than further what amounts to a discriminatory policy.

Nicholas J. Wells ’09 is an economics and statistics concentrator in Pforzheimer House. He uses the QRAC regularly.