Photo courtesy of Hofstra University ResLife

When touring Hofstra for the first time, I remember wondering what the dorms looked like. There was this mystique to it. What could be over there? What was hiding just beyond the Unispan? I had to know.

 It turns out, there’s a good reason they don’t always show you any dorms on tour: Hofstra University’s Achilles’ heel is how drab and boring the residential portion of campus is.

There are a multitude of reasons for this. The biggest is how dead it is on weekends. Most of this problem can be attributed to how many students are commuters. According to U.S. News, only 41 percent of Hofstra students lived on campus in 2022. That is a remarkably low number. When over half of your student body is not around when they don’t have to be, you are doomed to have a lackluster environment for the other 41% of students.

To be honest, I don’t entirely blame commuter students for not wanting to come back on the weekends.

t’s not like Hofstra does a great job of organizing or promoting fun and exciting activities for students to participate in on weekends. We have sports which, don’t get me wrong, are fun, but that isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Even so, the marquee weekend sporting activity at most universities is football, something that Hofstra no longer has.

You may argue that, due to the higher number of students who don’t live on campus, there isn’t much the university can do event-wise for those who do stay here. Maybe the university should try harder to employ some more fun activities. Here’s a theory: what if one of the biggest cities in the world was a train ride away? The very few “Explore Next Door” trips that do happen seem to disappear halfway through the semester. Do you mean to tell me that you can’t find a single cool event to attend in the city during April?

Not only is there a lack of events, but what the residential side does have to offer isn’t exactly thrilling either. Plenty of dorm buildings are either falling apart or out of the way of everything. Colonial Square seems nice at first glance, but that first impression sours rather quickly when you realize that if you want to go anywhere that isn’t the gym or HofUSA, it is a hike.

I didn’t realize how bad it was until I was looking at off-campus housing for next year. You would be shocked how many houses in different neighborhoods are closer to the academic side of campus than Colonial Square is.

Getting to the academic side from Colonial Square is a mini journey. If you don’t want to walk through the Student Center parking lot every day, you just add more time to your morning walk by taking the sidewalk. I know this seems like a non-issue to most, but I don’t pay the amount of money I pay to go here just to play a real-life game of “Frogger” every morning.

I would not be surprised if you told me most of the land on the residential side was just parking lots which is quite ironic considering how dreadful parking is around Colonial Square. The only big parking lots close to Colonial Square are the two near HofUSA, which is only convenient for a handful of the many buildings in the complex. Meaning, that if you don’t get in the row that lines the front of Colonial Square, you are out of luck.

I also remember how big of a selling point the arboretum was on my first tour. To Hofstra’s credit, the academic side is beautiful in the spring when all the trees have their leaves. However, they decided to save none of that beauty for residents. Because nothing screams, “I can’t wait to spend four years here taking in all this nature” quite like six 14-story buildings ruining any chance of living that gleeful fantasy.

Most importantly, living here is just plain expensive. Most houses in the surrounding area have rent prices that are a fraction of the cost of living in a dorm. When you consider that it is cheaper, more convenient and more fun to find a house to rent off-campus, what incentive do you have to stay? According to Hofstra’s website, most options range from about $6,000 to over $8,000 per semester. That is ridiculous for how little value you get out of such a high cost.

Hofstra’s residential issues, whether due to the university’s incompetence or not, are issues nonetheless. I don’t blame anyone who is willing to pack it up and go somewhere else after just a year or two of living here, especially when Hofstra seems to be doing everything possible to make you want nothing to do with their housing options.