By: F.X. Galvin
# 3 Holy Family University – Give me a break
University located in Philadelphia, must be a cool place. HAHAHA. Located in lovely Northeast Philadelphia, Holy Family like so many other schools has attempted to expand. Up until about ten years ago, Holy Family was strictly a commuter college, populated with kids from the Northeast. The school worked… Many local kids got a mediocre to decent education from a four year school. What did Holy Family do? Take a page from the Neumann College playbook and built residence halls. The school just is not built to be a live-in campus.
Holy Family made the most of their athletic program, moving up to Division II from NAIA to allow itself the capabilities to give scholarships. Great move, I have to give it to HF, attract kids from outside the area with a scholarship then the word will spread and students will want to come there. Eventually, Holy Family will become Neumann, Arcadia, and Cabrini and start bringing in better students and more dollars. Great idea, but sorry, not really working yet. . . Maybe in ten years but not yet, only time will tell. Like stated above, Holy Family is located in Northeast Philadelphia. It just doesn’t jump at you as a place to go to college. Admittedly neither does Temple, LaSalle, and Widener, which are located in worse neighborhoods, but they have something Holy Family does not…Tradition.
Anyway the point of this is really to talk about the social scene at Holy Family. Rumor has it, even though it is small, the people do drink at Holy Family, and it can be a good time. The problem is that the parties resemble the kind in your parent’s basement where you are scared to be loud to wake your Mom up. “Shhhh. RA’s coming, Everyone shut the fuck up, I can’t get written up again.” That just has to suck. Ten people in a room scared of fake college officials, just is not college, sorry. I tired to find out on Holy Family’s website how many students live on campus but I was unable to because it was almost impossible to navigate through. Holy Family, you definitely need some IT help, I hear Beerslugger is available, hit em’ up seriously, you need it.
Ok, so the campus is beat where are you going to go? Let’s hit up Frankford Ave. and all of the classy bars in the neighborhood. Let’s barhop from Casper’s to McNoodle’s to Coach’s to Rauchets Tavern. This will be an awesome time. Maybe, don’t get me wrong, I have been in some of these bars and know people that go to these bars but they are locals and go there because everybody knows their name. It is not a place for college kids unfamiliar with the neighborhood to try to make friends. You cannot go into one of these bars acting like a young, out-of-town, college kid who thinks he owns the place because they are the cat’s pajamas at Holy Family. You will inevitably get your ass beat. Locals do not stand for that shit. Every Monday I exchange war stories with one of my closest friends at work, HR Chick, who lives in the Northeast. Her bar stories include countless fights (got no room talk considering I have a black eye right now, really long story but not that interesting. If you comment and want to hear it I’ll personally e-mail you), resulting in hospitalization, stabbings and random pit bull attacks within the bar. HR Chick is a reliable source, she is not white trash, she is educated, and attractive. I do not want you get the wrong impression considering the abovementioned stories. This is just what happens at these places weekly. Also, to the defense of these local bars, it is not the bar’s fault, it only takes one asshole to create a melee at a corner bar on a Saturday night. Good luck out of town Holy Family students.
I have no problem with Northeast Philadelphia. Several of my closest friends hail from its various parts. It just is not an area conducive to college kids. It is great for locals to commute to, but unlike Neumann, which Holy Family tried to emulate, it just is not built to be a college town. And really, bottom line when you cannot copy of Neumann properly, which is not saying much, you have issues.
A link to the 4th Worst College Social Scenes in the Philadelphia area