Anybody who is considering applying to Tufts this year should know that there is a good chance that you will have to live off campus as a freshman. They accepted too many students to house in dorms, and forced 100 of them to live in a disgusting hotel more than 1 mile away from campus.
The administration promised all sorts of perks to the impacted students, but didn’t follow through on most of them. The worst part is a shuttle service that often takes 45 minutes to get to campus. And the hotel is in a dangerous part of town, so walking isn’t a real option, especially for girls.
The administration has been totally unresponsive to the problem that they created, and the housing situation is ruining freshman year for most of the kids in the hotel.
1805 incoming freshman and 100 living in a hotel. It is a very small number. Unfortunate but small. Many other schools overenrolled this year and had the same problem. NU has hundreds living in a hotel.
It’s the Hyatt Place hotel in Medford. It’s less than a mile from campus. Ideal…no, Dangerous…???
The students, who were selected at random from a pool of first-year students arriving on Sept. 1, will be housed on several floors of the Hyatt Place. According to Josh Hartman, senior director of residential life and learning, the hotel is less than a mile away from campus and within biking and walking distance. The university will also provide a shuttle from the Hyatt Place to the center of Tufts campus and the Davis Square T stop.
“[One] bus will begin at the Hyatt at 7 AM while a second bus begins at the Davis Sq stop,” John Savino, assistant director of transportation and contract services, wrote in an email to the Daily. “Then at 9 AM, a third bus is brought on beginning at the Hyatt.”
This schedule is made to ensure that the buses consistently remain on a 15–20 minute loop, according to Savino.
According to Hartman, the Hyatt Place offers superior accommodations compared to standard housing. These include luxury bedding, free laundry services and complimentary room cleaning by hotel staff. Hartman noted that these students will receive preferential treatment in next year’s housing lottery to make up for the inconvenience caused by the extra transportation time to and from the Hyatt Place.
The “drive” to campus is only 5 minutes. But, the school has not provided enough shuttles for the route, and they operate on an inflexible schedule. The result is that kids are often waiting more than 30 minutes for the next shuttle to arrive. Hence, my comment about taking 45 minutes to get to campus.
It looks like it is across the river and by a major highway. It may be a small number, but that is a big deal if it is your daughter that has to walk because the shuttle isn’t functioning as promised.
Of course you can walk. But, it is through an unsavory neighborhood. Tufts promotes its on-campus residential life for Freshman. They have filed to live up to that promise. The kids at the Hyatt are physically and socially isolated from the students that lived in dorms.
Yes, and many female students have reported unwelcome attention on the streets between the Hyatt and Tufts. Tufts, in fact, has asked that the students use the shuttle system exclusively. So, they are obviously aware of the dangers of the Hyatt’s neighborhood.
Yes, and risk your safety. Why don’t you check out the neighborhood yourself before assuming that students are just lazy. Dorm students are 5 minutes from their classrooms. Hyatt students are paying the same $80,000 to live in a dirty hotel off campus. If that’s the residential life they wanted, they wouldn’t have chosen Tufts.
OP created an account today and immediately posted with the intent of criticizing the university. The criticism may be deserved or not, but I see no reason to leave this thread open because OP isn’t asking a question.
Out of interest, I’ve linked a map of the most “unsavory” parts of Medford. The hotel in question is not in the “unsavory” neighborhood. It appears that the “unsavory” area of Medford is, in fact, the university, so I guess students at Tufts should not walk on campus. (I’m guessing that Tufts’ “high crime rate” is probably due mostly to alcohol related incidents, because in general, Medford is incredibly safe.)