<p>i think that the idea of swarthmore as isolated is relative to each person. i know people who go into philly every week, i know people who HAVEN’T gone into philly. the two main ways to get there are by train ($10.50 roundtrip) or by the philly shuttle (free, but you should book a space at least a day in advance!). i found myself going into philly 3 times a week at one point last semester, and now i go in about once a month. so that’s the logistical stuff – now for the more intangible, hard to tackle stuff.</p>
<p>the town of swarthmore sucks in my opinion. the co-op’s a sweet grocery store but that’s about all that the town offers me. target is about a 10 minute walk away, and there’s a shuttle that runs a few times a week to that as well. that being said, when the weather is nice you come to appreciate the suburban surroundings. philly’s nice but it’s not exactly pretty. aesthetics aside…</p>
<p>the reason why anyone would be driven (or… shuttled) to go into philly or get off-campus in the first place – is there anything going on during the weekends? (because i guarantee you, there is very little time/reason to go into philly, or to even go off campus, during the week… unless you’re not doing ANYTHING outside of your classes). swat has plenty going on on the weekends – parties, movies, shows and plays, concerts, talks… let me expand. olde club (concert venue – local and swat groups play there), the frats (we have two, they are friendly), paces parties (funded by SAC (student activities committee), hosted by lots of different groups around campus), movies being shown by the movie committee, different performances by the drama department, student-run shows, a cappella groups, rhythm n’ motion (awesome dance group), are staples events on the weekends in my opinion (though the a cappella concerts and RNM perform less frequently than how often parties and olde club concerts happen). we actually get people from bryn mawr and haverford (though less of the latter) who come to swarthmore on weekends. i’m not sure how much that tells you, but to me it says that at least people outside of swat think that we have vaguely interesting stuff going on :). that being said there have been maybe 3 weekends here where there was nothing going on that interested me – those were weekends where i knew that i wanted to go into philly. </p>
<p>you’ll go into philly based on what is going on (that may not interest you) or what might not be going on (though this is a much rarer occurrence, i assure you). personally, i’ve gone into philly for restaurant week (x2), for a lecture, and generally to get dinner or visit friends at penn. students are generally not going into philly EVERY weekend because there’s plenty going on around campus (plus ALL SAC funded events/everything except for pub nite on thursday are free. which is sweet). </p>
<p>so where does that leave us. you can go into philly as often as you want, it is nice to get off of campus every now and then. but swat is not so suffocating that you need to do so at every given opportunity.</p>
<p>hopefully this helps give you a better understanding of the issue.</p>