n I have nothing against Brian Fadem or his article about the lazy river (“The myth of the lazy river,” Sept. 25, p. 6). What I do find offensive is the lazy river itself. My dislike for the lazy river stems from the fact that if it was not there we could have a 50-meter swimming pool.

I was on the Boston University Swimming and Diving Team for four years and as anyone who has seen the old pool – and Brian, finding that one is much more of an adventure then the lazy river – would agree, this new pool is much better.

The only problem is that the new pool could easily have been made into a 50-meter pool with diving towers. As it stands, we have something like a 36-meter pool. I would understand having a 36-meter swimming pool if only when I looked behind the diving boards I did not see the Recreation Pool that contains the lazy river and hot tub.

Some might argue that this separate pool was needed, but I disagree. For those that have seen the lazy river, it is nothing like the relaxing inner tube rivers at water parks. This lazy river wraps around itself and the hut tub in an area no bigger than an above-ground pool.

If one wants to make an argument that the lazy river is useful for rehabilitation, which would be fine, except that the Physical Education Recreation and Dance department has an endless pool in its trainers’ room that is specifically designed for that purpose while the lazy river is not.

The other part of the Recreation pool does get use with water aerobics and other classes, but these could easily be conducted in the shallow end of the pool while the deep end was being used for something else.

In addition, there is always the old pool over at the Case Athletic Center. Now of course people who do know something about college swimming can just say that we never compete in meters during the season. That is only half true.

While teams do not compete in 50-meter pools during the season, every four years NCAA competes in 25 meters. More importantly, any swimmer that wants to compete on an international level must train in a 50-meter pool — not to mention the benefits of training at that distance.

For example, many schools have 50-meter pools: Harvard University, Arizona State University (three pools, one 50 meters long), University of Pittsburgh (two pools, one 50 meters long) and many more that compete at the national level.

While I can see why we would get a 50-meter pool because of cost or space reasons, those do not seem to be an issue at the Fitness and Recreation Center.

Instead, the university, heavily influenced by PERD, built a facility that is wasteful, redundant and prevents the competition pool from being truly state-of-the-art.

Michael McGrath

CAS ’06