USG working to revamp the Lyon Center


Since its release last week, the Revamp Lyon campaign and survey has received more than 700 student responses about the state of USC’s fitness and recreational spaces.

Launched by Undergraduate Student Government, the campaign aims to gather information about student experiences with the spaces and how they can be addressed.

By the second day of the campaign, the page had 750 likes. Having begun as a response to many complaints about the subpar state of the Lyon Center, Revamp Lyon was launched to help USG begin to outline the shortcomings of the Lyon Center and how they can be improved.

Headed primarily by Chandler Marcus, co-director of Wellness Affairs, and Darian Nourian, assistant director of Wellness Affairs and a staff writer for the Daily Trojan, the campaign hopes to generate dialogue on how recreational facilities can be improved before ideas are pitched to the administration.

The basis of this dialogue comes from Revamp Lyon’s online survey, which is offered through a link on its Facebook page. The survey is meant to collect student opinions on how well the university’s recreational facilities meet their needs and what could be better improved. The survey includes a section for students to leave more detailed comments on what should be done to improve the Lyon Center.

Students on the Facebook page have indicated that recreational facilities are important to them, and according to the survey, the Lyon Center is no longer meeting the needs of its students.

According to Marcus and Nourian, the Lyon Center was built in 1989, when USC was primarily a commuter campus. It was designed to accommodate 3,000 people. Since then, the university has grown in size, now boasting a student body of 18,000 undergraduate and 23,000 graduate students — many of whom still depend on the Lyon Center to be their main fitness facility.

Since that time, the facility has undergone only minor renovations, such as a change in the physical layout of the machines. But, according to the student survey responses this is not enough.

“Students complained most about overcrowding and broken machines, but things like the poor lighting situation also matter,” Nourian said. “The Lyon Center gives off an overall depressing mood, and it’s supposed to be this place where students come to de-stress. How are they supposed to do that in such a dreary environment?”

In spite of an array of different suggestions, students have complained that the Lyon Center’s largest issue is its lack of machines. According to Marcus, there is not enough room to add more equipment, so the only means of alleviating this problem is through an expansion of the Lyon Center or the addition of a new facility as a whole. Though a new recreational facility will be among the first tasks projected to take place in the building of the University Village, the space will likely be small in comparison to the Lyon Center.

But instead of waiting for the University Village, which is set to be completed in 2017, to add more breathing room, USG has a different idea: physically expand the building in which the Lyon Center is housed. Though there are currently no concrete plans as to how this would be done, there is a discussion around whether the building should be expanded vertically or horizontally. This would help alleviate the problem with space and would allow the Lyon Center to add more up-to-date equipment.

According to Nourian, 98 percent of the 718 responses gathered so far indicate that students support a renovation of the infrastructure and equipment of the Lyon Center.

Though no construction is currently planned, Marcus and Nourian are hard at work not only finding out what the students want, but also doing research into recreational facilities at other comparable institutions of higher education.

“We want to improve fitness here and make it a pride of USC students,” Marcus said. “You walk into the Campus Center and feel proud to go here. With the Lyon Center, that’s not the case.”

The two hope that the survey will generate responses from at least 2,500 students, and from there, they plan to take the students’ demands to administration members.