My daughter is a freshman at Brandeis and loves it so I’m biased but…I think the fact that it’s out in the suburbs is a plus. Since it takes a little effort to leave campus, the kids mostly stay on campus during the week, which makes it much easier to bump into friends at the cafeteria, library etc. Being “stuck” actually makes it easier to make friends. That said, Brandeis also has weekend shuttles into Boston and frequent shuttles into Waltham so the kids can absolutely leave campus and go exploring if they want. For my daughter it’s a nice balance of leaving campus about once a week, but also never sitting alone in the cafeteria.
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I wouldn’t consider it much of an effort to leave campus and go down to Main or Moody Street. It is true, however, that because it has a contained campus students never really have to leave to have fun. Heck, there’s even a bar on campus! And Cholmondeley’s! (which I only recently found out was not, in fact, the model for Central Perk in Friends, a show created by Brandeis alums. An urban legend. Darn.)
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This is a fun rumor. I’m going to keep spreading it even if its not true!
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Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX (near Austin) got a Zip car on campus last year. Last spring, our tour guide was a junior international student from Kenya. She said that she hasn’t had any problems getting to where she’s needed to go and she hadn’t had a car on campus at all, just asked nicely for rides (and gave people money for gas) and it worked out. Our tour was before the Zip car thing started at Southwestern, though!
We just toured Occidental last weekend. One of the big turn offs for my son was that they said you really need a car to explore any of the city. They empathized that there was no charge for parking and that over 50% of the freshman had cars. There isn’t a good public transportation option and Ubers are very expensive. It is a small campus in a suburban area. Even though it is technically in the city, my son felt it was too isolated.
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My D attended Bates. She never had a car and never felt she needed one. Some friends had cars, and by the time she was an upperclassman, they would have excursions occasionally. The college provided frequent shuttle buses to Portland and nearby areas in Maine, and I think there was a shuttle every couple of weeks to Boston for day trips. The college also offered plenty of excursions, and various clubs provided their own transport. For example, she participated in debate and they went as a team to various other colleges for competitions.
Getting home wasn’t a problem. For the first couple of years, she went to and from college via coaches and planes, then a couple of friends had cars and they carpooled.
D had a friend from Florida. She drove an enormous red pickup truck. She just loved driving and took a lot of road trips. She did have a tough time finding parking sometimes, as her car was so big. Some college towns have overly zealous parking enforcement around the college and kids at Bates got parking tickets pretty regularly. Some colleges have more limited parking options, but others, such as the college my son attended, have enormous parking lots that are miles from campus, which is not very convenient.
I think a lot of colleges provide plenty of transport options. My son attended Binghamton (not an LAC) and took his car his second year. He really didn’t need it, tbh. The college had a bus that went all around town and even though he had a car, he still used the bus regularly, especially if there was a group and some, ahem, underage activities going on, when he wouldn’t drive.
My good friend’s son is at Colorado College. He took his car with him for his second year. He wants to ski at the weekend and found the bus schedule inconvenient. I’m not sure if CC has a car culture, but I believe he is the only one with a car in his group of friends.
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This really depends on your perspective. I grew up in a college town. Imagine owning a home and having to walk half a mile- with groceries and a toddler-- because students are illegally parked in front of your house (with a sign which says “permit parking only”) day after day after day. They get tickets- which pile up on the windshield- until they get towed and then there’s a hue and cry “I couldn’t afford to get my car out of the impound lot”. Or students who park their cars in private driveways before they leave for the weekend or on break.
You call it over zealous. I call it protecting the rights of property owners NOT to have careless students overrun their neighborhood. And this was a town with great public transportation and really NO need for a student to have a car on campus. Which is why the campus had limited and expensive parking- and the students felt the need to leave their cars on the surrounding streets.
If a college limits parking there is surely a reason.
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Yep, totally agree. That said, there are definitely occasions when parking enforcement are racking up fines for the town. But rules are rules. I don’t defend the students at all.
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The amount raised by fines is a pittance compared to the costs of police and fire protection for a town which has a college. Yes, the college has a security force or campus police.
But every frat party where someone pulls a false alarm (virtually every weekend night- starting on Thursdays and running through early Monday morning) or drunk kid who climbs out on a roof and needs to be rescued, or kids who try to ice skate on a partially frozen pond… these are actual costs incurred by the towns first responders.
I’d say a few hundred parking tickets barely puts a dent in the expenses a municipality faces trying to keep the “citizens” of a tax exempt property safe.
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I think they’ve stopped doing this for budgetary reasons. Hopefully they bring back these services soon.
ETA: They do still run shuttles around Lewiston/Auburn so students can get run errands, get to local internships/jobs, etc. Just not the longer runs to Portland or Boston, as far as I know.
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