Collins Fitness Center’s disrepair makes TU marketing disingenuous.
Those who have been in the Collins Fitness Center during a campus tour have likely heard a guide say something along the lines of, “The fitness center was actually made for a school twice this size.” They may also have felt a twinge of derision upon hearing it. Collins is definitely a nice facility, but anyone who uses it regularly can tell you that it is hardly the promised gym; a gym flowing with racks and cables. For instance, the only 40 pound straight bar freeweight has been bent for over a year. Three out of the main floor’s six available freestanding cable attachments — the most versatile and frequently used resistance machine in any gym — have been broken for several weeks. The gym’s lone assault bike has been non-operational since the spring 2026 semester. Additionally, one of the CFC’s only two lat pull-down machines sported an “out of order” sign from the start of the semester until the week of Oct. 3 — its weight pin remained broken until the following week. It would be unfair to call the CFC a subpar gym (and far be it from The Collegian to perpetuate any stereotypes that college students are ungrateful complaining junkies), but if the University of Tulsa insists on specifically marketing its gym as oversized, they have a corresponding obligation to keep that gym in working order.
A disproportionately spacious gym is a major selling point for anyone who likes to lift, one many current juniors and seniors may recall hearing on their own campus tours. The appeal of that selling point hinges on the extra available equipment; waiting for a machine or a squat rack to open up in crowded gyms is one of the single most frustrating inconveniences of working out. As junior electrical engineering student Andrew Vidanna puts it, “it’s annoying whenever you need to hit certain muscle groups and the machine you want is either taken or it’s broken.” For this reason, having so many of the most popular machines in the gym out of order completely negates the benefit of TU’s purportedly oversized gym.
Vidanna agreed that, “overall [the CFC] is a nice gym, when it’s in working order.” The trouble is that Collins has not been in working order for over two semesters. Lifters are frequently seen standing in a crowd around the remaining lat pulldown machine, and even during calmer hours, like those between noon and three, it is rarely able to be used without someone else working in. The adjustable cable stacks are even worse: these devices are used to train just about every muscle group on the body. That high degree of versatility means that a lot of people need them for a lot of their exercises. There is a cable stack on the second floor, but it is rusty and shaky. There are two sets of cables on the lower level, one with four attachments and one with two, but their weight systems are not the same. Thus, if someone is trying to track their progression on a lift and the one working stack set is occupied, they must sacrifice either the accuracy of using the usual machine or the time required for the other person to finish. Compounding the issue, not only are three of the four cables on one set broken, but because the lone surviving cable no longer has its neighbor, all bilateral exercises are funneled to the last pair of fully functional cables shared by all of TU’s students. The effect is that students lifting in CFC actually have to wait longer for their desired equipment than most other gyms.
The fitness center itself is hardly to blame. While all employees were forbidden to speak to anyone from TUTV or The Collegian by the manager, the manager herself did claim that the parts had been ordered for the cable stacks, and were soon to be shipped from overseas. The delay between the breakdown and the ordering of the new part is inconvenient, but primarily a constraint from the university’s budgetary allocations; and anyway, the issue is not that Collins Fitness Center is an especially understocked gym. The problem is that TU advertises Collins as a space “made for a school twice this size.” This is simply disingenuous. If they promise a gym with extreme capacity to attract new students, the university owes it to those students to keep the gym they actually do have in good working order, which it has not been for months.
The problem with the fitness center is, at its heart, false advertising. TU cannot simultaneously market the CFC as a luxurious gym fit for a student population of 8,000 while also having no 40 pound straight bar, one lat pulldown and half of its cables broken. They have to pick one or the other. Furthermore, they will have to do it soon; TU wants to increase its student body by a factor of more than two in the coming years. Even if Collins was fit for a campus double this size, it would still be rendered insufficient in the coming decade, meaning that any dysfunction would be even more of an unfair burden to its student body. These factors spell out a simple decision, but one which it is necessary for the school to make: Will they start maintaining their gym, or will they stop pretending to?
