BYU NewsNet - Students Concerned Over Gym's Racy Entertainment

BYU students are finding it difficult to avoid inappropriate material even while working out in a local gym. And they want it stopped.

Students and community members from five local organizations met with Kirk Livingstone, Gold's Gym director of operations, on Wednesday to discuss offensive programming found at their Utah county gyms.

The group requests include revising music video and movie content shown at the gym, allowing members to change channels on the group TVs, and objections to some dance classes that use provocative moves.

"They brought up some valid points," Livingstone said. "We've already started looking at quite a few things."

According to Jesse Yaffe, spokesman for the coalition of the five organizations, 80 percent of local Gold's Gym members are BYU students.

"We feel it's a big deal, especially at BYU," Yaffe said. "All of a sudden, students see explicit, racy, promiscuous videos. It makes it harder for them to keep their minds pure."

TV screens around the gym show music videos from the Gold's Broadcasting Network. Students listed several music videos that are particularly offensive and show indecent material.

"The cardio cinema for the most part plays PG-13 movies," Yaffe said. "A lot of them still have really provocative and sexually explicit scenes. We're asking for no racy or explicit PG-13 movies."

Gold's Gym is looking into installing ClearPlay in the cardio cinema, Livingstone said. ClearPlay filters inappropriate content from movies. Still, little can be done about other areas of concern.

"We realize we will never be able to make every single member happy," Livingstone said. "But we do the best we can."

Thomas Alvord, president of BYU's Students That Oppose Pornography, said he doesn't expect all concerns to be addressed.

"I think some of the points will actually take some effort on their part to change," Alford said. "It's more with the network and the pornographic stuff they're showing on that and the questionable stuff in some of the movies. Those promote and normalize pornography the most."