KNH Classes Cancelled | Graphic By Grace Merkle | The Wright State Guardian
When Wright State University (WSU) went online in the spring of 2020, the campus’s Raider Active program was canceled. Now students are wondering if the program will be brought back.
What was the Raider Active Program?
The program, which included 49 total classes ranging from archery to yoga, was created to introduce students to sports-focused exercise. It was offered by the Kinesiology department until its cancellation.
According to the program webpage, the benefits of joining a Raider Active class were “the quality of instruction, cost, equipment, and an increase in social interaction.”
Each instructor was chosen because of their mastery of the sport they would be teaching, and students taking between 11-17 credit hours did not pay an extra instructional fee for the class. However, students did have to pay a small lab fee for use of any equipment.
Another goal of the program was to provide a space for students to learn a new sport or skill, make some new friends and get some exercise while trying something that they might not otherwise get a chance to do.
One example of this was the fencing class. On its own, fencing is an expensive sport typically assumed to be almost exclusively for members of the upper class who could afford the equipment. The Raider Active program gave students interested in fencing an opportunity to learn about the sport for a substantially smaller fee than they would need to pay at a private club.
What do students think?
The classes also provided an unexpected bonus: increased club attendance. Tisha Sharma, president of the WSU Fencing Club, first became involved in fencing through the class.
“It was super fun,” said Sharma. “A lot of our members came directly from the classes.”
Sharma noted that the classes were always full of new students.
From 2017 to the program’s cancellation in 2020, Sharma’s friend, L. Palacio took seven different Raider Active classes.
“It would be a really great thing if they brought it back,” Palacio said.
Another interested party was the former fencing teacher, Cheryl Paquette, who had been working in the Raider Active program for 20 years before the program was shut down. She had good things to say, not just about the fencing class but about the others as well.
“Judo was one of the most popular, because [the teacher] was nationally ranked,” Paquette said.
Paquette is a WSU Alumni and was first introduced to fencing through the class. She met her husband there as well.
“The reason I started fencing was because I had a lot of stress, and I thought that a gym class would help me relieve that stress. They need these classes back, especially with all the stress students are under these days,” Paquette said. “The University is neglecting student’s mental and physical health by removing these classes.”
Paquette ended by saying she would teach the class again if the opportunity ever arose.
