Ava Compagnoni: avcompagnoni@ursinus.edu
Helf, FLB, the Bakes, the Gym, Helferrich, the FieldHouse, Floy Lewis Bakes Center, the list goes on and on. Why are there so many different names for this one building? It serves many different purposes, the basketball gym, the strength and training gym, the sports medicine clinic, the dance studio, the multi-purpose fieldhouse, Naturals, the list goes on and on.
I asked students, and a few professors, what they called this building, varying between majors, interests, but most importantly if they were a student-athlete or not. As the hub for all things athletic at Ursinus, student-athletes spend a large portion of their athletic career in ‘the building.’
However, disregarding the debate about whether Ursinus considers dancers student-athletes or not, dancers also spend a lot of time in ‘the building’ throughout the year.
Another group who spends a lot of time in ‘the building’ are the Health and Exercise Physiology majors, minors, or people who take those classes as electives. With a decent HEP major population on campus, coincidently also being student-athletes, ‘the building’ is the powerhouse of that academic field. I asked 83 Ursinus community members, 42 student-athletes, 31 students, and 10 professors!
Why is this? How can one building have so many different names? Freshman Bella Vassalluzzo has been influenced by her tennis practice culture to call it ‘the Bakes.’ “Our rain day practices are in the fieldhouse but I have only heard my teammates call the building ‘the Bakes’ and it’s infectious. Now I consider the whole building under that name, even when we go to the locker room, I say we’re going to the Bakes,” says Vassalluzzo. Some students have no affiliation with the building at all, but merely pass through the enormous complex from time to time. “I have just al- ways called it the FLB. I am not an athlete, I go to Planet Fitness down in Royersford, I attend a sparing amount of sporting events there, and I have never had class there,” says senior Emily MacKinnon.
So socially, we will never decide on a name for the building. Even though it does have a proper title, the Floy Lewis Bakes Center, it has subsections that may define it more or less for a student or member of the Ursinus community.
