Making a Splash on Campus
College Recreation Now Includes Pool Parties and River Rides
The new york time

When Louisiana State University surveyed students in 2009 to find out what they most wanted in their new recreation complex, one feature beat out even massage therapy: a lazy river.

But with dozens of schools (including some of its Southeastern Conference rivals) building the water rides, the university had to do one better: When its lazy river is finished in 2016, it will spell out the letters “LSU” in the school’s signature Geaux font.

“The students involved in the planning process wanted something cooler than what anyone else had,” said Laurie Braden, the school’s director of recreation. “University relations said it was O.K. as long as it followed the font appropriately and didn’t take it out of scale.”

In the university recreation center arms race — with 92 schools reporting over $1.7 billion in capital projects, according to a 2013 study from the Nirsa: Leaders in Collegiate Recreation (formerly known as the National Intramural-Recreational Sports Association) — the latest thing is to turn a piece of campus into something approaching a water theme park.





Floating on the “lazy river” at Texas Tech’s water recreation park. The $8.4 million complex includes a water slide and deck. Credit David Bowser for The New York Times

At Auburn University in Alabama, for example, students can soak in a 45-person paw-print-shaped hot tub or scale a 20-foot wet climbing wall before plunging into the pool. Designs for North Dakota State’s facility, on which construction is scheduled to begin next year, include a zip line that students can ride out over the water, a 36-foot-diameter vortex of swirling water and a recessed fireplace on an island in the middle of the pool that students can swim up to. A small “rain garden” is planned to mist lounging students.

Over at Clemson University in South Carolina, there’s talk of redeveloping a 38-acre property on Lake Hartwell, across from the current rec center. The project may include “blobs,” essentially floating mattresses placed so that students can jump from one to another. “It’s like an obstacle course, like ‘American Ninja,’ ” said David Frock, Clemson’s director of recreation, referring to the TV show “American Ninja Warrior.”
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Meanwhile, a company called the Aquatic Development Group, a purveyor of pool climbing walls, has installed a $1 million wave rider at Pensacola Christian College in Fla., and is working with six other schools. So far, AquaClimb has placed 10 climbing walls at colleges, with another 35 in the works.

“Aquatics are a huge growth area,” said Jack Patton, who leads the sports-facilities group at RDG Planning and Design, an architecture firm in Des Moines. “A lot of students don’t want to swim laps, but a leisure pool is a great equalizer: I can get my toes wet, I can play, I can study or I can go full in.”

Per square foot, pools are the most expensive part of a rec center to run, so it makes sense that universities are looking for any way to lure more students to them, said Darren Bevard, a principal at Counsilman-Hunsaker, an aquatics design firm based in St. Louis that has designed the water portion of nearly every big new university project.
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The focus on pools for play comes with a shift in university rec centers from just places to sweat to more social spaces, complete with hangout areas. Sun loungers, water slides and projectors for “dive-in” movies at the pool are a part of that.

Ms. Braden, also the president of Nirsa, said today’s students are more sophisticated about health and well-being. “They come in and ask, ‘Do y’all have Zumba?’ but it’s not just about exercise anymore,” she said. “Students — I don’t know if demand is the right word — but certainly they expect that the amenities to help them have a balanced life will be in place.” To reflect the change, most collegiate rec facilities have been christened “health and wellness centers” — and students’ introduction to them is a social event.







At Texas Tech. Credit David Bowser for The New York Times

Texas Tech holds a pool party during the first week of school to show off two acres that include a Texas-size lazy river, water slide and terraced wet deck for tanning. (There’s Wi-Fi, too.) Amanda Cook, 20, a junior, said the $8.4 million complex, which students pay for with a $10-per-semester recreation fee increase, quickly becomes the place to go.

“As it gets warmer, you start seeing less people in class,” she said. “Everyone will say, ‘Let’s go float the river.’ There will be, like, 300 people there, and there won’t be any inner tubes or rafts left.”

With college costs climbing and outstanding student loan debt at a record $1.2 trillion, schools justify these facilities as important for recruitment and retention. Classrooms can look alike, but pools are a memorable tour stop for prospective students, especially, say, at the University of Missouri, where guides show off the indoor beach club’s palm trees, lazy river and waterfall, and coyly announce that the grotto was modeled after the one at the Playboy Mansion, something the firm that designed it, Counsilman-Hunsaker, confirmed. (A 2013 National Bureau of Economic Research study called “College as Country Club” found resort-style amenities have more impact on student enrollment at less-elite schools.)

In some cases, students vote to tax themselves for buildings that won’t be finished until long after most have graduated.

Lauren Hayes, the 2008-9 Auburn student government president who campaigned to upgrade the university’s recreation facilities, said her platform was an obvious choice, given that the school’s “kind of ’80s dark basement” was ranked among the worst in the SEC at the time. A week before she left office, 74 percent of students voted to raise their activity fee from $7.50 to $200 to fund the $52.5 million project.

Administrators also like to point to studies conducted at Purdue University and Michigan State, which have shown that students who hit the gym do better academically than those who don’t. Floating down a river is not exactly a major calorie burn, but that’s not the point.

“When you think about our sedentary lifestyle today, if you can get some kid out on a zip line instead of playing video games and eating pizza, that’s a huge win,” said David Greusel of Convergence Design, whose projects have included a water slide at the University of Toledo. “It’s also the logic of the grocery store: Once you get them in the door, they’re going to buy something else. Once you get them in the rec center for the pool, maybe they’re going to sign up for a yoga class.”

With resort-style facilities, though, comes the fear that an institution of higher learning sounds too much like a four-year vacation. Missouri State University, whose new pool opened in 2012 with a zip line and a lazy river, has tried to prevent that problem by calling the water ride a “current river” or a “bear river” (the school’s mascot). Brandon Eckhardt, an assistant director of recreation at the school, said, “We don’t like to use the term lazy because we’re not lazy in our institution.”

Some schools are trying to sidestep the image problem altogether. Arizona State, which frequently shows up on Playboy’s annual list of top party schools, had little desire to burnish that reputation when adding a leisure pool to its west campus in 2013. “They went so far as to say they weren’t going to have lounge chairs because they didn’t want people sunbathing,” said James Braam of 360 Architecture, who worked on the project. “They didn’t want the lazy river. They wanted a serious pool.”