An authentic tour of Hawk Hill and the skinny on all things SJU-related
As a current or prospective student, hopefully you already know a little bit about our school and its vibrant community. Maybe you’ve taken a tour guided by a Hawk Host, listened to alumni speak about their experiences and even taken a selfie in front of Barbelin. This week, the Hawk staff decided to give a little tour of our own making, moving from East to West. We decided to get real so you can learn about our honest thoughts of Hawk Hill, the good and the bad.
Starting with Hagan Arena, the building itself is a great place for fans, players, teammates and even the occasional professor to cheer on our renowned basketball teams and join in on the fun. If you want a school with pride, here’s a great place to start. But sport-enthusiasts, be forewarned, Hawk Hill isn’t a place where you will encounter a wild football-centered culture; we don’t have a football team. Even though we do have some great club teams, if you’re looking to play an intramural sports for kicks you may encounter some trouble – sports tend to be all or nothing here.
If you leave Hagan’s main entrance and walk directly forward, you’ll walk right into the heart of the Erivan K. Haub School of Business, known best for its Food Marketing major and the risk management and insurance program, which is tied for first in the nation with Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. The sleek stylish walls of Haub are enticing, and if you follow them out the west doors, Barbelin stands only a set of steps away. The tower itself was originally founded in 1927, and is the namesake of Felix Barbelin, S.J., our first university president. Everyday, students can point to a unique piece of history that stands tall as a centripetal part of our campus. Our history is alive and well.
The central Office of Public Safety and Security can be found tucked on the left of the massive bell tower. The physical office itself is just a small part of its function and purpose. Public Safety offers car, bike and walking escorts both on and off-campus to ensure students’ safety and well being. It should be noted that, in our opinion, safety tends to be downplayed by students on campus. When things go wrong, tension rises and students remain on high alert. Due to the size of our campus, safety can be overlooked by students, until something happens.
If you walk through Barbelin square and out, you can’t miss the next obvious stop on your tour: the library. The glassy walls and steely exterior are beautiful, but just make sure you don’t break your arm opening its heavy doors. Lucky enough for us, door-opening culture is prevalent at Saint Joseph’s University: it is always common courtesy, for every person of any gender, to hold the door for the next person. Don’t ask us why, but it comes down to respect, on which we pride ourselves.
The library itself has some mixed reviews; for some, it can act a social hub to meet up with friends, for others it’s where they do the daily grind. Either way – social butterfly or study addict – you may still be disappointed. Unfortunately for those of us that like to hit the books, there is no 24 hour study space accessible to students, except for those in the Honors program. If you’re living off campus or no longer on central campus, good luck finding a building open to live out your true night owl life. If you’re looking for a little more casual of an atmosphere to chat with friends? The lack of a student center here on campus is apparent. Students tend to frequent both Campion Student Center and the library in hopes of meeting up, but neither really get the job done. Let’s not forget about the Perch though. If you leave the library from the doors you came in, and travel down a few sets of stairs, the Perch should be within sight.
Don’t worry, we don’t have to go in. Take a peek from the outside into its overly dark windows and if your timing is right, you may see a few students milling about. The Perch may be accessible to students every day, but only tends to get any kind of real crowds during an event. You might notice nearby we have an elementary school right across the way called Samuel Gompers Elementary School. While students screaming their heads off at recess can be, shall we say, a little distracting, to students in Bellarmine, it also keeps us grounded to rest of the world. Having a very active community surrounding our campus not only reminds us of reality, but it offers opportunities to grow. St. Joe’s students have the opportunity to tutor at Gompers, allowing the student body to both volunteer and learn more about the surrounding community.
Across City Ave., the Kinney Center for Autism Education and Support offers another opportunity for students and community members to interact. Kinney serves adults and students with Autism Spectrum Disorder, which allows students interested in the Special Education major, or another similar area, to gain experience in the field. It’s also another chance for students to pop the campus bubble. We’re more than just a campus and reaching out to the community is vital to our university mission. All students are encouraged to do service of some kind during their time here, and most do.
We might as well go to Campion next – it’s a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Perch. Before entering Campion Student Center, we should take a moment to acknowledge how lovely the employees are. The staff of our university do their job well and will brighten your day whether in Campion, the dormitories or the library. Even if you’re barely awake for your 8 a.m. class, and in some serious need of coffee, the staff members will greet you with a friendly smile. It’s near impossible to get through the omelette line without a conversation or joke.
The food shall we say, is not the homestyle cooking you may be used to. Don’t be surprised – you may just get a case of the Campion cramps after a meal with us. But it’s college, people, what exactly were you expecting?
Even though we love our students and staff, the lack of diversity is apparent at St. Joe’s in many aspects. If you look around, we need to strengthen our visible diversity, but even our underlying distinctions remain very similar. For a university that costs over $40,000 per year in tuition, genuine socioeconomic diversity among students can be a rarity and that is only one facet of what we have to improve. Most students are white and come from middle to upper-middle class households. Our community may be strong, but our homogeneous nature is undeniable.
Let’s get back to the tour. If you exit Campion’s main entrance the opposite side you entered, you’ll be right on the main lawn of campus. The chapel sits across the sidewalk, with Villiger Hall, one of our four freshman housing options standing beyond it. If it’s a nice day out, hammocks will pop-up on campus and provide nice seating arrangements to those looking to catch some sun. There are a few spots on this lawn that often get filled with these colorful places to sit, but any spot with two trees remotely close to each other offers the perfect place to sit back and relax.
Just as it may be a little hard to find a spot to plop your hammock, there’s a limited amount of parking on campus. Unfortunately, this means that you must leave your car at home, because the Office of Residence Life does not allow you to bring your beloved wheels to campus until freshman year is over.
Before taking a look at freshman housing, step back for a moment to be in awe of the Chapel of Saint Joseph’s; its simple beauty is a physical space for students to practice their faith. While St. Joe’s boasts the quality of its Jesuit education, not all students on campus partake in faith-related activities, or have to. For some, college can be a time to explore faith and St. Joe’s is a great place to do that. But if you aren’t Catholic or don’t wish to become involved with that aspect of campus, you won’t be experiencing FOMO, fear of missing out, anytime soon.
Once you reach Villiger Hall, you can either cross City Ave. or the picturesque McShain bridge to get to Maguire Campus. Combine a super practical bridge to connect campus with a very instagrammable view of City Avenue and you’ll have perfection.
McShain Hall, another one of the freshman dorms, is located right in the middle of campus along with the other freshman housing. Although LaFarge Residence Center and Sourin Residence Center were originally temporary housing, they still keep your walk, to just about anywhere on central campus, under 10 minutes. Once you get to upperclassmen housing though, you’ll have to consider a longer walk to campus. St. Joe’s does provide a shuttle service, but if it’s not always on time and you may find yourself walking up to 20 minutes to Campion if you live in Lancaster Courts.
St. Joe’s residence halls clearly value safety with its multiple checkpoints, but while the security may be comforting, it can also become inconvenient. No matter who you are, St. Joe’s student or not, you have to sign into the majority of residence buildings you don’t live in. Desk attendants manually write down your name and then give you a paper pass to hold onto in exchange for your ID. It can be a pain and could use an update. But whatever you do, don’t be on campus without some form of ID, because it could be your only way of access around the school.
If you continue walking down City Avenue though, Overbrook train station is only a 10 minute walk from main campus. St. Joe’s can have the best of both worlds, as we’re located right on the border of Montgomery and Philadelphia counties; technically speaking, we’re are in the suburbs and the city. If you’re an urban hippie, this may not be the perfect place for you, but you can still find the time on the weekends to go down to South Street.
It’s important to note here, as we close our tour, that every institution has its pros and cons. As a prospective student, you can often become lost in the details of university, but it is ultimately up to you to look beyond the facade of a perfect university. Recognize that you chose to attend college to be enlightened, educated and exposed to a world much wider than your own. These are only some aspects of our university, and we wish we had space to share them all. We’re proud of St. Joe’s, as a university body, and believe our community has value.
We, as an editorial staff, acknowledge that there are areas for improvement. But we also know that current Hawks are working towards creating a better community for future ones. It’s a process. But we’re up to the challenge. Are you?
