Do you swim at Payne Whitney Gym?

Please consider signing this petition to ask Yale Athletics to improve the inadequate and unacceptable conditions for daytime recreational swimming at the 3rd Floor Practice Pool.

Since October 2024, daytime swimming has been drastically cut: from five workdays to three; from three daytime hours to two; and only half the lanes are available, making for excessively crowded conditions (four swimmers per lane, with some swimmers having to wait). Some days, swimming hours are cancelled with no advance notice.

Yale recently spent millions of dollars renovating a pool which now sits idle for much of the day. By contrast, Yale's peer​ institutions​ manage to provide their communities with significantly more ample opportunities for recreational swimming. Closer to home, Albertus Magnus (whose endowment is .06 percent the size of Yale's) manages to keep its pool open for seven hours a day nearly every day. Notably, before the 2020 lockdown, Yale's daytime weekday hours were 10am-2pm, plus early mornings and early evenings, five days a week.

With our signatures we ask Yale Athletics to live up to its stated mission and values for campus recreation by restoring access to recreational swimming to the Yale community.