Hofstra University’s advertising will take every opportunity to remind prospective students of the school’s proximity to New York City, and they’re right to do so. After all, the bright, bustling streets of the Big Apple are one of the most attractive locations for college students. Yet with a hellish, unwalkable turnpike splitting campus in half, new students at Hofstra quickly become aware of the lack of anything resembling a college town around Hofstra’s campus – something that leaves students at a disadvantage.
There are countless definitions of what a college town is: many people can agree that college towns are communities dominated by a university’s presence and subsequent student life. College towns are close to campus, charming, easily walkable, and jam-packed with restaurants, bars and other activities.
Looking at the area surrounding Hofstra University, a community like this is nowhere to be found. Much of the area walkable from campus feels more like a dilapidated strip mall than a college town. Hofstra’s version of the lively main street you might find in a college town is Hempstead Turnpike, the perilous six-lane road running through campus that was recently coined by Newsday as “Long Island’s most dangerous road for pedestrians.”
Walking down Hempstead Turnpike – skinny sidewalks lining several lanes of speeding traffic and a mixture of gas stations and fast-food joints – couldn’t be farther from the college town dream. Despite a couple of infamous bars and eateries frequented by students during a night out, Hempstead Turnpike is void of any feeling of a college community despite being the supposed main street to one of the largest universities on Long Island.
Hofstra’s lack of a college town-feel is related to its identity as a largely commuter school. As U.S. News reports, well under half of Hofstra’s undergraduate population lives on campus. While there are plenty of students attending classes during the week, the campus quickly empties as the weekend approaches. With no college town, students living off-campus feel no attraction to stick around, and even some local students who live on campus travel home during the weekend. This results in a quiet campus that feels lifeless when classes are not in session.
During the quiet weekends on campus, students find themselves with little to do in the immediate area surrounding campus. America is infamously car-dependent and unwalkable. For many residential students across the country, college campuses and surrounding towns can be the only opportunity to live in a truly walkable community. While Hofstra’s actual campus is walkable, that privilege fades away the second a student steps off campus.
With no walkable college town, Hofstra students are pushed to venture farther off campus to explore the surrounding area, something that proves difficult for students without cars.
Hempstead’s lack of a college town feel leads Hofstra to shift focus to their broader location on Long Island as opposed to the surrounding neighborhood. A quick Google search about Hofstra’s location brings up pages by the university parading its proximity to NYC. From an advertising standpoint, Hofstra is right to do so. The biggest city in America is much more attractive to prospective students than the lesser-known and duller neighborhood of Hempstead.
Just 24 miles from Manhattan, Hofstra does all it can to make NYC accessible for students. Running shuttles to the two closest Long Island Railroad stations and offering programs that lead semi-frequent expeditions into the city allows students to lean into the fantasy of having the “City that Never Sleeps” nearby.
However, despite attempts to claim that NYC is right around the corner, it still takes a committed trip to get there. With a $20 round trip ticket on the LIRR, frequently popping into the city is unfeasible for many students, leaving them to suffer from Hofstra’s lack of a local, walkable college town.
