6 Wednesday, April 8, 2015Features

While Soumia Allalou worked on her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, she regu-larly used the women-only gym hours provided at the university’s gym. They were convenient, she felt more comfortable and often went with friends. But after mov-ing to Montreal to study law at McGill, she was surprised by the lack of information on the univer-sity’s website about women-only hours.

“I just assumed they would have them,” says Allalou, 23. The ath-letic department informed her there were no such hours, but that she could come early when no one was around and “work in a corner.”

So Allalou began to work on a survey.

She contacted the Students’ So-ciety of McGill University (SSMU) and began talks with Jill Barker, the McGill athletics manager of marketing and communications. While Allalou says Barker was ini-

tially open to the idea of women-only hours, things changed after an article about her attempts was published in The McGill Tribune.

Posted on the Spotted At McGill Facebook page, the article sparked a petition against the idea of women-only times — with more than 600 signatures — which was sent to Ol-livier Dyens, McGill’s deputy pro-vost of student life and learning. Af-terwards Allalou says the university unilaterally cut off communication with her. However, on March 19, 2015, a day before Dyens released a media statement on his decision, he and Allalou met.

“He said, ‘Look, we basically disagree on how to solve the prob-lem that you’re thinking. It’s your choice how you decide to work out,’” recalls Allalou. “‘I don’t see a modesty issue at the gym, and, as a matter of principle, McGill will not segregate its services.’”

In his press release, Dyens de-fended the decision, saying “Mc-

Gill is a community where every form of di-versity (cultural, linguis-tic, gender, religion, etc.) is celebrated and encour-aged,” again referring to women-only gym times as “the segregation of services.”

But Allalou says she isn’t looking to segregate services.

“[It’s only] a couple of hours a week and we’re talking about a separate room. The main gym [would still] be co-ed.”

Before communica-tion had been cut off, Barker had shown Al-lalou the Varsity Weight Room, usually reserved

By Nick Dunne Photos by Sierra Beinfor student athletes, and Allalou estimated it could accommodate upwards of 30 people. Using this room would not prevent students from accessing the co-ed gym. Be-cause it wasn’t directly addressing the root cause, Allalou said that Dyens told her they would instead continue to train staff and encour-age women to report inappropri-ate behaviour. But Allalou says that isn’t enough.

“That’s exactly what the [facili-ties] have right now and that’s not working. What about women who can’t access the gym?” she says.

While there was similar resis-tance from some students when the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) sought to implement women-only hours in 2013, the path was less rocky. Demand from both the Muslim Students’ Association and the Centre for Women and Trans People — citing concerns about paying for the athletic facilities but being unable to access them for re-ligious reasons or comfort issues — led to a RSU survey in which 2,000 people responded in favour of the women-only hours.

The survey was presented to An-thony Seymour, Ryerson athletics’ manager of recreation, who cre-ated a pilot project last September.

Working with the RSU, he de-cided to offer an hour and a half every day at the Ryerson Athletic Centre (RAC), at times near peak hours. He was initially worried that there wouldn’t be enough de-mand for the hours, but says

the response has “far exceeded [his] expectations.”

Before women-only hours, Sey-mour estimates only 10 per cent of members working out in the weight room were female.

“When we started looking at some of our busier times, we were

24 women, while the afternoon shifts averaged 28 women in Oc-tober — when the hours were be-ing tested — and found that up to 60 women were coming through during women-only times.

Sydney McInnis, a first-year journalism student, says she some-times feels intimidated because she doesn’t know how to use all the equipment.

“I just feel judged. People look-ing at me and being like, ‘she doesn’t fucking know what she’s doing,’” she says.

McInnis has used the hours just twice but says she enjoyed the ex-perience.

“It turned out to be a better time. I didn’t feel so intimidated, [with] big men everywhere lifting heavy stuff. It was kind of nice to not be around that,” she says. “The entire reason why I go to the RAC and not the MAC is because the people there are a little bit less intimidating and a little bit more amateur … but still, I will never go into the weight room at the RAC unless I’m with [a male friend]. I’m too scared.”

Seymour says that some patrons have told him using the women-only hours has made them more comfortable using the co-ed hours. Allalou says she would hope for similar results at McGill.

McGill currently offers women-only pool hours on the basis of

Getting In Your Reps

getting 70-100 people [and] we were really only getting seven to 10 women in the weight room working out,” Seymour says.

Given that 54 per cent of un-dergraduate students at Ryerson identify as female, the number of women using the weight room was unsatisfactory.

According to Seymour, the morning shifts averaged just over

“modesty concerns.” While Bark-er and Dyens declined to speak with The Eyeopener, Dyens reiter-ated the university’s stance against women-only gym times because they “do not believe in the seg-regation of [their] services” in an emailed statement.

Several negative comments on national news sites have criticized Allalou’s push for women-only hours as solely a religious accom-modation, but she says it’s part of a larger women’s issue.

“We’re talking about a gender issue here, not necessarily just a religious accommodation issue. I’m talking about a broad range of women who have many rea-sons why they can’t access the gym,” Allalou says. “At the end of the day, I just want to increase the health and fitness of women at McGill.”