Xpeditions, the campus outdoor-adventure center in Reeve Memorial Union, will be closing its retail operation and relocating its rental and trip-planning services to a less prominent location in Reeve following the spring semester break. While Xpeditions is not actually closing (although someone else will now have to meet the university’s demand for indestructible water bottles and hackey sacs), this does mean that the outdoor-adventure center has been as profitable as a campus exotic-pet store would have been.

Reeve’s marketing department conducted a survey to see what students would like to see fill the void that Xpeditions will leave, and the most popular response in the survey was a video/DVD rental store.

That means that Xpeditions, a store where students can set up trips to go rock climbing or skiing or canoeing and rent the equipment that goes with it, is being moved out of arguably the most visible retail location in Reeve and in its stead students want a video/DVD rental store, which provides a product that requires sitting down and not moving for two to three hours.

The obvious conclusions here are: first, the student body is lazy and horrifically out of shape, and absolutely any pleasure that could be derived from climbing a rock wall would be completely negated by the amount of work that that activity requires. And second, the people who thought a campus adventure center would be a good idea should be severely chastised for thinking our student body would willingly move that much.

However, nobody really deserves to bear the brunt of the blame for the Xpeditions blunder. The swell folks at Reeve Union, which although probably did overestimate the collective desire of students on this campus to go mountain biking, at least had good intentions when they created the excitement outlet.

But how many different stores could Reeve have brought in to fill that space that would have just intensified our gluttonous and indolent lifestyles? If Reeve only cared about fleecing us for as much as we’ve got, they could have brought in something students would really shell out wads of cash for, like a fast-food franchise or, assuming alcohol could be sold in the union, a liquor store.

However, the university chooses not to slowly kill us with booze and cholesterol. If students actually did get complete control over what goes where in the union, it would be filled with liquor stores and fast food restaurants and probably a strip club too. That’s just the slippery slope you start down when you want the designated center of campus life to be utilized in a way that would allow you to rent “Darkman III: Die Darkman Die.”

But that doesn’t mean the downfall of Xpeditions is the students’ fault for not knowing what’s best for them. Just because something is good exercise, difficult to do and builds character doesn’t mean it’s fun. If someone really wanted to get into shape, they probably wouldn’t head to Xpeditions and book a trip to go snowshoeing. They would probably go outside and start jogging, which is also good exercise, difficult to do and absolutely no fun. Plus, jogging is free.