The Activities and Recreation Center is an on-campus gym. Students are automatically given membership to the gym and the cost of the membership is a part of their registration fees. According to the student fee overview on the UC Davis website, up to $399.15 can be paid annually for use of the facilities. They lump in the cost of the ARC with several other costs (IM Sports, Sports Clubs, Financial Aid, Recruitment and Retention Center) so the true cost of the ARC is difficult to determine. Most likely students are paying as much as the non-student members are for an annual membership which is $340 (which is comparable to most gym memberships). One can only hope that students do not have to pay the full price of an annual membership  because students are not even covered for summer sessions if they are not taking summer classes.

When the ARC was being built, the university took money from the students who would graduate before ever being able to use its facilities. This is like a gym needing investments to be built, but taking money from everyone in the area even if some of the people do not even want a gym there. To add insult to injury, the people who paid for the gym to be built have to pay the same membership fees as everyone else in order to use the gym after it is completed. If an individual wanted to bring a gym to an area, investments might be made, but they would of course have to be paid back. Then people would be given a choice whether to use the gym or not and those who do not use it would not be forced to pay for it. There are plenty of gyms that operate this way, but the university administrators are not able to do so, either due to corruption or incompetence.

Some might argue that the ARC is more affordable than other gyms. There are two problems with this. First of all, the ARC requires almost 25,000 students to pay up to $399 a year, whether they use its facilities or not. Unfortunately, the ARC is not even equipped to properly handle the much smaller number of students who do use it during peaks hours (which you can determine by the wait time on a popular machine during peak hours). Secondly, although the gyms in Davis do charge more than the ARC (most of the time if you do not haggle or wait for sales), this is not a fair comparison because the ARC has forced out and keeps out any affordable gyms in the area by taking many potential customers using a lack of availability of information and automatic memberships for Davis students. Furthermore, $399 is not at all affordable for a gym especially if it does not cover the entire year. If one were to find a comparable 24 Hour Fitness (which would be a 24 Hour Fitness Sports center), you would get a full year’s access for about the same price (with the addition of a hot tub and pool). They are also open longer hours and even on national holidays unlike the ARC. If you wait for their frequent special offers or even haggle, you can get a hundred or two knocked off. In order to get customers, other gyms compete in prices and services while the ARC does not. You even have to pay for parking on weekdays and even weekends if there is an event going on at the ARC. Due to these problems, the ARC is a disservice to UC Davis students.