Why Amherst Needs a Playground

bruegel_play — Children’s Games, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1560

(Craig Campbell)– “When the goal becomes more important than the act, it’s probably not play” – Dr. Stuart Brown, pioneer in play research.

Near the end of last semester, I attended a public forum to discuss the proposed architectural changes to Keefe. There I witnessed a long and impassioned debate between Game Room supporters and MRC advocates, both competing for prime campus center real estate.

In defense of the Game Room’s previous location, Campus Center Managers extolled the value of a substance-free, communal, visible space for table games at the crux of the campus. They said that it was a safe space for students to slip, for a moment, into the innocent, wholesome realm of childhood. The Game Room and its central location, they claimed, is necessary to the student body because it is the only space on campus specifically devoted to play; it’s a place that fosters nascent friendships between diverse social groups, encourages gaming for the sake of the game, and provides a temporary escape from stress and studies.

What other space from your childhood serves all the same purposes? Playscapes! But why should the magic of the jungle gym, swings, and monkey bars be restricted to children? Picture your elementary school playground, and imagine that those stairs are twice as tall, the slides twice as wide, and the see-saw twice as long. What reasonable 18-22 year old wouldn’t want to play on that?

The number of adult-sized playgrounds around the world has been growing in recent years. New York City opened its first one last summer in the Bronx. Part of the vision for a makeover of Detroit includes the construction of outdoor workout areas (playgrounds) in improving neighborhoods. Parents encourage their kids to play in parks because it provides the youngsters with both entertainment and exercise. Likewise, these facilities, already scattered about Europe, the Middle East, and China, offer a quick, fun exercise break for the busy adult. For a health-obsessed school like ours with an often-overcrowded gym, these alternative outdoor workout areas would be a welcome addition to campus.

Contradictory to popular belief, childhood play – playing “house” or “doctor,” for example – is not an instinctive preparation for similar occupational activities in adulthood. Rather, it satisfies the more primal human need for exploration; the activity stimulates the brain’s processing center of curiosity and imagination. Due to cultural factors, play (remember, any activity in which the act is more important than the goal) is discouraged in the adult population. However, we have by no means outgrown our instinctive need to explore.

Amherst students certainly play – most of us subscribe to the “work-hard, play-hard” mantra – but so much nonacademic activity at this school is competitive, which detracts the happy caprice contingent to play. While 1/3 of the student body experiences, daily, the physical and emotional rewards of playing their sport, our glorification and abundance of varsity athletics only encourages an aggressive and sometimes toxic play environment. With the school in the throes of turbulent social changes, construction projects, and policy revisions, let us not forget that the most basic satisfaction for children, students, and adults comes from the purity of fun.

So, Amherst administrators, draw the gym-rats and video gamers out of the dark indoors and build us a playground!

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1

Time You Spent Wasting | AC VOICE on April 11, 2013 at 2:34 am

[…] shrink drastically and we have fewer opportunities to exert pent-up energy and satisfy our need for exploration and adventure. By 8th grade, my recess had become a short 15-minute chatting period on the blacktop. The soccer […]
2

Typical Amherst: We got spirit, yes we do | AC VOICE on September 3, 2013 at 5:40 am

[…] We then turned to the real meat of the meeting, and the project that BBB will be developing in the coming months and years. Rather than writing a “masterplan” for campus improvement, they are building a “framework.” Plans for actual construction on Amherst’s most problematic structures (Keefe and Frost, for example) will come later; their goal, for now, is to explore the possibilities and map the potentials of the existing campus, and what changes might – given the current arrangement of our residential halls, academic buildings, and outdoor landscape – be realized someday. What would Amherst look like if Merrill was gutted and redesigned as an all-purpose dining-hall, campus-center extravaganza? What if the Socials were replaced by apartment-style housing with kitchenettes, and new dorms were built near the football field and behind College Hall? Would adding more lawn furniture to the Quad, designated research space in the Bird Sanctuary, and incorporating roof access to residential halls better exploit the beauty of our natural surroundings? What about an on-campus playground? […]
3

Siraj Sindhu on May 11, 2014 at 11:23 pm

I really wanted this to happen early last semester. When I went about trying to make it happen, I ran into a major roadblock: location. There aren’t many good places on campus to put a playground. The quad needs to have open space, Memorial Hill’s picturesque quality would be destroyed, and most other locations are too peripheral to lend themselves to the foot traffic that would make a playground successful. The issue I ran into with the hill near Keefe and the socials was institutional fear of liability: that drunk students would injure themselves on playground equipment. This ruled out all of east campus.

I do think this is a great idea, though, and if there’s support for it in the future I’d be thrilled to resurrect the effort.
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  Craig Campbell on May 12, 2014 at 1:56 am
  
  the socials are coming down, though! i say that somewhere in the behind-mead-next-to-keefe area (which needs work, anyway) would be good. otherwise stick one in the dirt area right behind the entrance from tennis courts to the rail trail (i’d use it). i mentioned this to the campus planner and he seemed pretty dismissive. i think reframing it as ‘outdoor exercise equipment’ could gain more traction.
  
  but seriously, if this happened then admissions could be ALL over it for marketing purposes (who doesn’t want to go to a college with a playground?)

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