Students may be improving their health and getting in shape when working out in the weightroom, but their hearing may be a whole different story.

“It’s ridiculously loud,” sophomore Ashley Gress said. “You can hear it word for word when you walk by the room.”

While Gress admits the volume of the music isn’t bad all the time, she has gotten headaches once or twice during workouts.

Gress isn’t the only one concerned about her hearing; Becky Beaman, the secretary to the academic dean, is also worried about the potential dangers of the loud music.

“I wonder if it’s so loud that it could be damaging students’ hearing,” Beaman said. “I think it would also depend on how long they’re exposed to it.”

Beaman said she has started walking in the gym during bad weather instead of using the treadmill in the weightroom.

“It wasn’t loud constantly, but there were times when it was so loud, I had to get off the machine just to talk to my friend,” Beaman said. “Sometimes it was turned up so loud that students would have to holler back and forth across the room to each other.”

Beaman said she has tried to combat the problem by bringing in headphones, but she had to turn them up so high that in the end, the headphones were just as loud as the other music being played.

Gress attempted the same thing and had similar results.

“I wear headphones but usually I can still hear the other music, so I have to turn up the volume on the headphones really loud,” Gress said.

Sophomore Britta Johnson, who works at the front desk in the weightroom, hasn’t received any complaints about the music being too loud.

“At times it can be too loud, but other times it’s okay,” Johnson said. “Sometimes the students just turn it down themselves if it gets to be too loud.”

Still, the loud music isn’t enough to keep Gress away.

“I still go there,” Gress said. “I love it other than the loud music.”