Any way you look at it, I’ve got a few bones to pick with the SERF.

According to the UW Recreational Sports website, the Southeast Recreational Facility was built in 1983 for the 3,900 students living in the Southeast dorms. Luckily, it has since been renovated to accommodate the 25,000 or so other undergraduates who might want to use the facilities as well.

Unfortunately, even with the renovation, the SERF can be a clustered, chaotic madhouse during peak hours, and patrons often have to wait up to 20 minutes for a machine they can only use for 30. The room temperature is often uncomfortably warm as well.

Annoying as this may be, it is a regular occurrence at most gyms that one must bear if they wish to escape the winter misery for a good sweat. What wouldn’t hurt though, is if the budget allowed for the repair of one of the umpteen elliptical machines and treadmills that are regularly out of commission or just simply missing.

The real problem that comes from all this crowding, however, is the SERF’s icky lack of sanitation. Aside from my third-grade terminology, I can find few other words that embody the feeling I get after touching anything in the cardio room. As a first line of defense against all things nasty, machine users are supposed to wipe down their machines after 30-minute sessions with a special virucidal spray provided throughout the room. But next to the bottles of Virex hang dingy, sopping wet rags that can sit for hours without being replaced.

According to Knapp Products, Virex is a concentrated hospital-grade disinfectant/detergent, cleaner, sanitizer, fungicide, mildewstat, deodorizer and virucide that controls the hazard of cross-contamination. Also according to the website, you must leave Virex on surfaces for a minimum of 10 minutes in order to disinfect them. Then they should be rinsed.

At the SERF, if machines are even wiped down at all, it is usually a quick swipe with these sopping, dirty rags before being used by the next patron. There is no reinforcement of wiping of the machines after use, though staff will usually wipe them down once or twice per day.

Patrons are encouraged, again without reinforcement, to wipe down the porous blue mats hanging in the tiny stretching area as well. From mere observation, one can see even less attention is paid these, as sometimes they are not wiped off at all. If they are, it is again — a quick swipe with the foul rags.

The situation isn’t much better in the weight room. Although Virex “stations” encourage patrons to wipe off machines after use, I have seen this act neglected many times. Worse yet, I have never seen the free weights and benches next to them wiped down at all. While I am sure — or at least I would hope — SERF staff cleans and disinfects these areas daily, I can hardly feel comfortable that they remain sanitary given the massive number of students who use them during the course of the day.

Hopefully, the SERF has at least had these minimal sanitary measures in place since it opened in 1983, or even since its renovation in 2003. As for now, however, they are outdated, unsanitary and unsafe. While the recent addition of Purel hand sanitation dispensers makes my skin crawl a little less, I still worry about acquiring one of the nasty staph infections that have recently been popping up in fitness facilities. The MSRA staph infection can cause deep, painful abscesses that require surgical treatment, among other unfortunate issues.

While we can take measures of our own to reduce unsanitary conditions such as wiping machines down again before we use them, carrying our own towels and hand sanitizer and bringing our own mats, the SERF needs to step up and bring sanitation methods up to par. Disposable, pre-treated disinfecting wipes or much more frequent replacement of cleaning rags would be a start. Visible and easily read posters on the importance of sanitary gym habits would be even better. And perhaps putting paper and a pen into their suggestion box might help open up the discussion as well. Until then, though, I would suggest we heed our mothers’ advice to wash our hands, and wash them well.

Laura Brennan ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in communicative disorders.