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Housing at Villanova has always been an issue. Students are guaranteed
housing through their third years of school (done by lottery), but this
causes some problem.s First, as seniors no one is guaranteed housing,
requiring most of the students to go out into the community and rent
houses or apartments. This has proven difficult for some for a number
of reasons: 1. Villanova is bordered by towns that still have old PA
blue laws on the books, one being that no more than three unrelated
people can live together in one house. Therefore, only three students
should be able to rent a house together, but because of prices students
are often forced to have more than three people in a house (say 4 or
5). This leads to students lying to landlords about the number of
people in the house in order to ensure that they will have a roof over
theri heads their senior year. Unfortunalty, and a bit ridiculously, if
the neighbors don't want big bad college students living next to them,
they call the township who has been known to investigate (go thru
discarded mail to see how many are getting mail at the address, surpirse
raids on houses to count mattresses, etc.)and enforce the law, resulting
in evictions of students. The University is no help as they try to walk
the fine line between helping their students and appeasing the community
and unfortunatley, the students often lose this battel.
2. As mentioned before Villanova is bordered by the sleepy little
communities of the "Main Line", who while they are happy to take our
rent, money for food at the local restaruants and shops, etc, make it
clear that they despise having Villanova in their backyards. This has
caused numerous problems between the students and the residents and can
sometimes make for a tense problems that throw the University in the
middle.
3. Despite the number of students that need off-campus housing, the
townships will ony approve certain houses for student rentals. This
forces students to move further and further away from campus, making a
car a necessary accessory to go to school.
Villanva's campus is beautiful in every sense of the word- old
chapels, a beautiful moestary, historic old buildings all combine to
create a charm., But not all Villanova's building are old. In fact the
Engineering bulding is a modern looking facility that, as legend has it,
will implode, not explode if one of the many experiments goes worng.
Furthermore, the Universtiy has completely overhauled the old College of
Business and Finance (BArtley Hall) and made it beautiful. And while
after hours the campus itself can be pretty deserted, I was never afraid
to walk alone at night and I never heard of anything bad happening to
any student who was alone at night. THere is a path that connects the
main campus to the South Cmapus, which some very "witty" student named
the Rape Trail- however, no one has ever been raped or accosted on the
path (which is well lit and has security emergency all boxes along the
way)The small amount of crime that one does heare about occurs away
fromt he campus and further into the surrounding towns.
One of the most impressive things about Villanova housing is the
West Campus apartments. These apartments are reserved for juniors and
boast big bedgrooms, two bathrooms, living rooms with bay windows and a
full kitchen. They are a gorgeous addition to the Villanova campus and
a wonderful place to live, if you are one of the lucky ones that is
selecte din the random lottery to live there.
The food at Villanova is very diverse and there is always somewhere
to eat. There is a main dinig hall called the "Pit" and a dining
facility called the "Spit" (South Campus PIT, and a dinign hall on the
West Campus. Furthermore, there are numerous snack places, including a
yogurt shop, a candy counter, a grill place, an Italian place and a host
of others, including the two tiered cafeteria in the Connelly Center
which often doubled as a "lounge" or Stage for campus events.
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