The all-male Fit Living community, dedicated to promoting healthy living through diet, exercise and study habits, is the latest addition to the university’s Live Lehigh communities.
The group of 36 students call House 104 home, but came from a group of male students living in Richards house last year. The men who founded it felt that it was a great way to live and work toward a common goal of healthy living.
“We heard about these Live Lehigh communities, we thought it would be a really awesome idea to stay unified under a common (fitness) goal,” said Joe Freeman, ’18, the community coordinator for the Fit Living house.
Nate Gyory, ’17, a Gryphon for the community, also said all house members came for the same reasons.
The house provides space for the members of the community to focus on their healthy lifestyle goals, like exercise and diet. The community members cook their own meals in the kitchen and have a gym with a treadmill, a stationary bike and an indoor rowing machine.
House 104 also has a study room to promote academic growth and good study habits. The community not only wants to promote healthy exercise and eating choices, but healthy mind and social interaction as well.
Pasquale Costa, a professor of industrial and systems engineering in the Integrated Business and Engineering program, works with the men of the Fit Living community to provide academic guidance and help promote strong study habits. He stressed how part of living a healthy lifestyle is making sure one is practicing healthy study habits in line with the community goals.
“In living there, they are teaching one another,” Costa said.
Costa said that Freeman was one of his students in the IBE program and that he reached out to him about the community. Costa supported the Fit Living community and agreed to be an adviser and attended the presentation to Residence Life.
Freeman said that last year the community had to apply and create a presentation to showcase what their goals were for the community and what they stand for. Following their successful proposal, the community was given House 104 as a living space. Fit Living initially decided they should expand to allow more people to live in the community.
“We kind of put it out to Lehigh if anybody was interested in the idea of living fit,” Freeman said. “So at first we tried to fill it with some girls, but we didn’t get as much interest as we wanted.”
Fit Living has Gryphons just like any other residence hall. Gryphons promote unity in the house by setting up events for the community to bond. One of the gryphons, Ferguson Watkins, ‘18, said they already had a community event: a fantasy football draft.
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