Panting For Credit

You think dartmouth is going soft? Almost nine out of ten students participate in some regular form of sports. Last January the gym had to set up a second weightroom to handle the crowds. And for the Spandex group there's the Fitness Life Improvement Program, known by its flippant acronym. About 150 students each term shell out $5O to earn PE credit and participate in the paunch and circumstance of aerobics, weighttraining, water fitness, and fitness dance. College employees and Dartmoutharea residents may participate in these classes, as well as fitness walking and dance sessions geared toward senior citizens or folks just beginning to exercise. During dinner hour parts of Alumni Gym resemble something between "Dance Fever" and Spa Lady. FLIP folks have formed a sort of sister-and brotherhood that's hard to miss after the first few classes. Sorority sisters jump and jack in certain territories of the room, the older locals hang back near the water fountain, and other groups of the Buff and the Anti-Buff (that's "jock" and "anti-jock" in current lingo) circulate among themselves.

The ten-year-old brainchild of WhitMitchell, the program's director, FLIP is putting granite in the muscles of some 3,700 participants a year.

Some 3,700 participants ayear have sweated it out.