The fitness centers across all three Quinnipiac campuses will be reopening on Labor Day, with some changes. For students who were anxiously awaiting the reopening of the gym, they finally announced their reopening date on their Instagram page (qu_fitness) less than a week ago.

The office of Residential Life sent emails to all students, with information on how to sign up for gym orientation. During the orientation, a guide walks you through the safety measures that have been put in place to ensure everyone’s safety. 

The new gym hours will be from 7-11 a.m. during the weekdays, and 9 a.m. to noon on the weekends. A capacity tracker will be used to ensure none of the rooms exceed their occupancy limit. Capacity tracking takes place during morning hours.  

During check-in hours, students can walk into the fitness center during these hours by tapping their card at the entrance. At the front desk, students have to show the green check on their QU Symptom checker to enter the facility. 

Students will be allowed to enter the room only as long as it hasn’t reached its occupancy limit. On the Mount Carmel campus, once a room reaches its maximum occupancy, students will be asked to use another part of the fitness center. 

To book a reservation, students need to use the IMLeagues app. Under the facility reservation tab, students can pick and choose their reservation times, this can be done 48 hours in advance of a reservation slot. For the Mount Carmel campus, two separate reservations need to be made for cardio and weights. 

The fitness center will close for two deep cleans throughout the day during the weekdays and one deep clean during the weekend. In between reservations, staff will perform high-touch cleaning. 

“The difference between a deep clean and a high-touch cleaning is [for] deep clean, we’re gonna clean everything in the building,” Coordinator of Campus Life for Recreation, John Somers said. “During high-touch cleaning, we’ll basically just clean everything that was potentially touched while walking around, and all the handles and consoles.”

After use, students are required to wipe down the surface of the equipment used. To avoid overcrowding, all cardio equipment has been moved to the rec center courts. 

The maximum capacity for Mount Carmel cardio and weight rooms are 25 and 20 respectively. As for York Hill, it’s 25 and the North Haven fitness center is 3.

Tennis courts will open up at the same time as the fitness courts however no equipment check-out will be happening this year.

“We don’t really want students to be sharing equipment. While we might disinfect it, there’s obviously still the risk of some type of illness or bacterial or viral transmission even after the disinfection. So if we can limit that, we’re going to.” Somers added.

Somers hopes that the fitness center can remain open until the end of the semester. He stated that a lot of their policies are dependent on the students. 

“We don’t want to be a reason that the university has to close down potentially,” Somers stated lastly.

The staff are trusting the students to be responsible and respect the safety rules that have been implemented by the university.
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