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A lot of cities have large colleges that sort of shape their surrounding neighborhood to be more young people oriented and sometimes bougie-er in putting up thing like quaint coffee shops and a greater variety of eateries. Westwood/UCLA in Los Angeles would be a pretty good example of that. Does Fordham University have that effect near the Rose Hill Campus? If so, what streets/areas is it most apparent?
Fordham University not fully integrated into the community. Visit the neighborhood and you'll see the sharp divide I'm talking about. Both sides are to blame and neither side willing to understand each other.
As a result, nothing much to do in the neighborhood. The students here don't even use the local parks...
I think the school is waiting for good ol' gentrification to occur. Happening to every other good school thats near a ghetto.
Fordham University not fully integrated into the community. Visit the neighborhood and you'll see the sharp divide I'm talking about. Both sides are to blame and neither side willing to understand each other.
As a result, nothing much to do in the neighborhood. The students here don't even use the local parks...
I think the school is waiting for good ol' gentrification to occur. Happening to every other good school thats near a ghetto.
No university is ever fully integrated into the community. For starters, the students are busy studying. Its not like they have that much time to hang out with the locals, and to the extend they socialize, they tend to prefer other young people their age who are also students.
As for the professors, its their jobs to teach the students, not necessarily be expert on local communities.
Is Fordham still considered a big drinking school? Getting ***faced and stumbling home was probably the most common off-campus social event in my day. Hopefully that has changed and now students are more likely to hang out at cute cafes and drink organic lattes, but I really couldn't say. As for local parks - what parks should they go to when there is an enormous amount of open space on campus? The park in Llittle Italy is an enormous playground anyway.
I don't know how much the students use the restaurants in Little Italy - I always thought of them as catering more to visitors from Westchester rather than students. Pete's Cafe always had a big Fordham crowd but it's more of a diner. But anyway, go to Arthur Ave. and you'll see lots of Fordham students. Fordham has built a good amount of off-campus housing there too.
I think typically there's very little interaction between the students and the local community. As the university has gotten more and more expensive, the social divide between the students and the local community has more likely grown rather than shrunk. Guards check IDs at Fordham's entrance - locals really aren't welcome on campus in my opinion. I can imagine many would find that to be off-putting.
Fordham is pretty much a gated community. Once you pass through those gates - it does feel like you're in another universe.
It's ironic though b/c development is happening in that area. Fordham Plaza itself has seen a nice little rebirth. But, yes, it's basically shielded from the neighborhood.
A big difference from say, Temple University in Philadelphia, which isn't shielded away and gated and has integrated with the community very well. It's one of the bright spots in an otherwise pretty rough North Philly hood.
I'm planning on seeing the Fordham-Butler game on Feb 16 with my son! If I want good relations between a school and my community, let me make the first attempt to reach out!
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