Picture a Thursday evening: you’re done with class for the week, and you head to the basement level B1 of the Campus Center for an altogether different kind of learning experience. In the makeshift auditorium, set in front of the ambiguous construction site, you and many of your diverse peers are ready to represent your equally diverse views on the subject of the future of the construction site. The theme to guide the discussion is: “A Swimming Pool: do we allow one or nah?” The conversation that follows is a brilliant representation of a productive discussion at NYU Abu Dhabi, full of excellently made points and thoughtful rebuttals. Climbing back up the stairs, there is a sense of camaraderie between everyone involved as they fight over the last soy milk carton at the convenience store.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. For whatever reason (NYUAD’s status as a portal campus definitely isn’t it), the administration allowed its choices to be dictated by the pro-swimming pool policies of the NYU New York campus, entirely excluding the large group of NYUAD students who choose not to learn to swim.

When asked to justify the choice of incorporating a swimming pool in the desert-based campus, Dean of Students Myles Nearly stated that it was in accordance with NYUNY policies that were based on a focus group in New York which discussed the “institution of swimmer-inclusive facilities, associated changing rooms and the importance of swimming classes.” The policies heavily imply that the choice to swim has to be respected by professors and faculty. However, what this blind following of NYUNY policies fails to account for is the different contexts in the UAE.

Ahlan Wa’Sahlan, Class of 2024, stated that “the UAE has a rich culture of pearl diving and abra ferrying, but the fact is that it is still a desert nation. To assume that all Emirati students and professors on campus approve of the existence of the NYUAD pool is presumptuous at best.”

The choices to swim off-campus, even as close as Saadiyat Beach, have been permitted by non-swimmer students without complaint. When will the swimmers on campus respect their choices and views to the same extent?

I, for one, am completely in favor of accepting non-swimmer culture, for that is what it means to be truly inclusive. Yet somehow, NYUAD administration has managed to make bigoted swimmer practices a part of the institution’s doctrine, without the prior creation of any sort of local focus group. These choices prove NYUAD’s continuous prioritization of the swimmer values of NYUNY over those of the UAE and NYUAD.

“It is frankly an outrage that the student body of NYUAD wasn’t consulted before this decision was made. It’s downright disrespectful, given the non-swimmer culture of several nations represented on campus. I mean, what’s wrong with land?” added Ayma Rialboi, Class of 2010.

Rialboi is hard to argue with. Leaving aside the amount of space that could have been repurposed in the basement of C2, an entire campus representing more than 120 countries was left out the discussion as to whether the pool aligns with their beliefs and backgrounds. Being truly inclusive here in Abu Dhabi is very different from achieving the same goal in New York: the number of lifestyle-driven non-swimmers here is much higher, preventing their swimmer policies from being a catch-all in the case of NYUAD.

The existence of the pool is ultimately made illegitimate by the fact that it is at odds with the vision of the founders of NYUAD. I remember nothing during my Candidate Weekend that suggested we would be force-fed a single-minded “global swimmer” ideology. The envisioned solidarity of such a diverse group of individuals in a culturally rich environment should prevent the misconception that we here at NYUAD would automatically approve of copying the facilities at NYUNY.

Perhaps the NYUAD swimming pool is an attempt to encourage us to believe that we would reach the same consensus as the NYUNY focus group; perhaps it was a simple — but fatal — oversight of the NYUAD administration regarding the presence of non-swimmer representation on campus. As Dean Nearly stated, “just like the students at NYUNY, students at NYUAD would also be allowed to choose if they wanted to use the pool.”

How is it fair to spend valuable resources on constructing a pool without considering if NYUAD students would want the same policies as NYUNY? If only the administration had taken the time to ask for NYUAD students’ feedback on the idea before going ahead with it, we would have achieved a much stronger mutual understanding between opposing views on the topic. Sadly, until the university realizes the importance of true inclusion of non-swimmers and the acceptance of swimming capability diversity, we, as a student body, will be stuck doing a rudimentary doggy paddle amidst waves of arrogant swimmers.