After Sidney (who declined to use her last name) finishes her workout at the Cal Poly Recreation Center, she heads to the locker room to gather her belongings.
With the Recreation Center’s signature green towel in one hand and her water bottle in the other, she passes by the locker room’s laundry basket and forgets to drop the towel off.
She places it in her backpack without even realizing it and leaves, underlining the very issue Cal Poly’s Recreation Center has had since opening on campus in January.
It’s a problem that many members such as Sidney don’t realize they contribute to. However, out of 2,000 towels, only approximately 150 towels were remaining in the beginning of April.
To try and solve the problem, Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) decided to buy lime green towels that month. These lime green towels would hopefully remind students to drop them off before leaving the center, according to ASI Coordinator of Membership and Staff Services Lindsey Lee.
Lee said the solution hasn’t remedied the problem yet though.
“If people are still taking them, then we are still losing inventory at the Recreation Center,” said Lee, who has worked for ASI for six years now.
On the other hand, Lee said the new green towels and various signs around the center have slowed the rate of loss.
“We have started with the same amount of white towels when we opened the building,” Lee said. “Those went really fast. The green towels lasted a lot longer. So we have been able to hang on to them from July, which would be four months. Whereas the white towels were disappearing within two-and-a-half months.”
Even with several signs around the Center reminding students to return them, the towels continue to disappear. Many members, such as kinesiology sophomore Ariana Elegado, said they read the signs, but simply forget once the time comes to leave.
“I noticed the different signs in the Center to remind me to leave my towel, but I totally forgot about it when I saw a lime green one in my backpack when I got home,” Elegado said.
Currently, the front desk of the Recreation Center cannot reveal the exact number of towels that have been taken from the center. However, according to Recreation Center staff such as Lee, there is a noticeable amount missing.
Consequently, losing towel after towel throughout the past few months has also cost the Recreation Center money.
Lee, along with the rest of the summer staff, plans on making future changes to the towel service once school starts in the fall.
One of the suggested changes is to create a fee that could be added on to each person’s membership. This fee would make up for the towels that go missing throughout the year.
But an extra fee is not something members at the Recreation Center would want to pay on top of the membership fee, according to psychology sophomore Molly Schlemer.
“Towels at a Recreation Center should be free,” said Schlemer, who has been a member since the Center’s opening. “I mean not to take, but to use. It would be annoying to have to pay an extra fee for towels during my workouts.”
Another option is to completely stop all towel service at the Recreation Center. But members such as psychology senior Andrew Lee think otherwise.
“It would be a hassle to have to bring my own towel to the center,” Andrew Lee said. “Most gyms have a towel service available so why can’t we?”