College Town

The idea is to think of Philadelphia as one big campus. That way the city can boast that it is one big college town like Boston does, for example, reaping the economic rewards that would result, and retaining the students who go to school here. How best to go about doing that was discussed yesterday by two panels consisting of academic and civic leaders. Their discussion was broadcast by WHYY-FM on its "Radio Times" program. The effort was organized by the Greater Philadelphia Collegetown Project, which is boosting the importance of Philadelphia as a college town.

Move aside, Boston. Philadelphia plans to tout itself as America's real college town. Stealing a page from Beantown, area colleges are launching a promotional campaign highlighting the area's assets to college-bound students - and their parents. "Boston has a national reputation for being a college town, and Philadelphia has every bit as much right to claim that status," said Ray Ricci, director of student enrollment for La Salle University, one of the 14 schools involved in the initiative.

After a year and a half of redevelopment efforts and the publication of a slick promotional magazine, borough officials say the bustling college town they envision may be just a few more steps away. Tonight, the Borough Council is expected to approve an additional $1 million in redevelopment bonds to buy the historic Franklin House - an 18th-century inn where, it is said, George Washington slept - and a 1930s elementary school that Rowan University intends to turn into a business incubator.

Sitting curbside in the already scorching morning sun, Rosalie Spelman waved at the passing Fourth of July parade in Swarthmore, cheering when crowd favorites, a half-dozen women with baby carriages, marched by in their "precision stroller brigade. " How long has Spelman lived in Swarthmore? "Oh, only 10 years," she said without hesitation. Only 10 years. That is unusual in Swarthmore Borough, a Delaware County town of old homes and older trees nestled between Springfield and Nether Providence Townships that celebrated its centennial in 1993.

In the old days, a Villanova Wildcat could get soused, throw up on a neighbor's lawn, and run around like a drunken fool. If trash from a major keg party proved too overwhelming, the public Dumpster served remarkably well. Graduation was the easiest way to avoid paying a fine or citation for such behavior. Those days appear to be over. Now, efforts are underway to cripple the students' annual beer chug along Lancaster Avenue, and to limit where they throw out their trash. Anyone who tries to stonewall paying a fine will face a warrant from the police.

Josh Harris, the new owner of the 76ers, is happy sitting center court at almost every home game. He has the best seat in the house, and why shouldn't he? He is a billionaire and, as he sees it, he made his fortune buying companies at just the right time - down-and-out outfits, in need of a fresh approach - just like he has done with the Sixers. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart. In the Sixers' case, nearly all the key ingredients to success were already in place - great coach, nucleus of solid young players.

It's Friday night and a crowd of loud, inebriated college students pours out of a local pub. Two suburban women and their tween daughters walk past and get in their car. Before they can drive off, one of the young bar-goers offers a rude gesture: a fleshy rear end pressed hard against the car's back window. A typical weekend in Happy Valley? Actually, no. It was witnessed one night in Radnor Township, outside Flip & Bailey's, in the Garrett Hill neighborhood. The stereotypes about the affluent Main Line suburb - think foxhunts, The Philadelphia Story, and author David Brooks' latte-crazed, Volvo-driving "bobos" - mask a surprising reality.

Auburn ended up 1 for 2 in getting a football recruit from Norristown High. Tre Hadrick, a 6-foot-2, 230-pound tight end, linebacker and punter, said he had accepted an invitation to attend the Alabama school as an "invited walk-on. " "I visited there and they gave me good feedback," Hadrick said Wednesday. "The coaches told me they didn't have a scholarship available now, but one could be available depending on my progress. " Hadrick was the second Norristown senior to visit Auburn.

Last spring, when he was graduated from prestigious Hunter College High School in Manhattan, Misha Weissman didn't bother to apply to colleges in New York City. A native New Yorker, Weissman wanted a change of pace and, like many other college students, he wanted to get away from his family. "I wanted to have the experience of living outside New York," said Weissman, 18, now a freshman at Swarthmore College. "Swarthmore was a small, liberal arts school with adequate resources - and it was outside New York.

The state's poorest city could become a college town, lawmakers said yesterday when they proposed to invest $18.5 million in Camden's four institutions of higher education. As part of acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco's plan to infuse $200 million into the city in a state takeover, the Camden campuses of Rutgers University, Rowan University, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and Camden County College would receive a share of the money - but only if each institution matched the state grant.

It's Friday night and a crowd of loud, inebriated college students pours out of a local pub. Two suburban women and their tween daughters walk past and get in their car. Before they can drive off, one of the young bar-goers offers a rude gesture: a fleshy rear end pressed hard against the car's back window. A typical weekend in Happy Valley? Actually, no. It was witnessed one night in Radnor Township, outside Flip & Bailey's, in the Garrett Hill neighborhood. The stereotypes about the affluent Main Line suburb - think foxhunts, The Philadelphia Story, and author David Brooks' latte-crazed, Volvo-driving "bobos" - mask a surprising reality.

ALTHOUGH Detroit and Toronto are in different conferences now, their rivalry dates to 1927 and they have played 117 playoff games, second only to 170 between Montreal and Boston. The two Original Six foes will play in the Winter Classic on Jan. 1 at Michigan Stadium, it was officially announced yesterday. It will be part of an outdoor showcase that also will include minor league and college hockey games at Detroit's Comerica Park. Toronto will become the first Canadian team to play in the Winter Classic when the Maple Leafs and Red Wings face off in Ann Arbor, about 45 miles west of Detroit.

Josh Harris, the new owner of the 76ers, is happy sitting center court at almost every home game. He has the best seat in the house, and why shouldn't he? He is a billionaire and, as he sees it, he made his fortune buying companies at just the right time - down-and-out outfits, in need of a fresh approach - just like he has done with the Sixers. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart. In the Sixers' case, nearly all the key ingredients to success were already in place - great coach, nucleus of solid young players.

LAS CRUCES, N.M. - Campus police at New Mexico State University are investigating claims that someone stole panties from a woman's clothesline. The woman told officers on Monday that she had hung several pairs of colored underwear and two bras on the clothesline Saturday night. She found her gate open Sunday and nine pairs of panties worth about $60 were gone. A year ago members of an NMSU sorority told police that one of their members had been stealing Victoria's Secret underwear and bras worth hundreds of dollars.

More non-native college graduates are choosing to remain in the area after finishing school, a sign that the Greater Philadelphia region is on the rise as a college town, according to a new survey being released today by the nonprofit Campus Philly. The report, based on a 2010 survey of 4,600 students and alumni of local colleges and universities, found that 48 percent of non-native Philadelphians said that they were staying in the area after graduation. By comparison, a 2004 survey showed that only 29 percent of non-natives stayed in the area.

People like Deborah Diamond illustrate the sticky charm of Philadelphia. At 47, married, and the mother of two, Diamond lives just a few blocks from where she grew up in Center City. "I know these streets from roller-skating, from bicycle-riding, from pushing a stroller, and I'll know them when I'm in a wheelchair," said Diamond, who next month will take over as the new head of Campus Philly, an organization that's all about stickiness. Campus Philly wants more of the 366,000 students who attend college in the area to stick around after they graduate.

It's striking, the solitude, how calm and quiet and peaceful are the farmlands that spread as far as the eye can see to either side of the turnpike that splits Kansas. With little traffic and no lines at the tollbooths, there are only sprawling fields, silos, and an abundance of deer. Philadelphia it's not. Off the Kansas Turnpike, in the artsy hamlet of Lawrence, a town about one-twentieth the size of home, is where freshmen Marcus and Markieff Morris chose to play college basketball.

An ambitious $300 million plan to turn a sleepy Gloucester County borough into a "quintessential college town" enters a new phase this week. With high-rises taking shape amid the debris of demolished houses, officials will hold a ground-breaking ceremony today to start construction of a boulevard connecting Rowan University and Glassboro. Borough and university officials say the project will cement town-gown relations in this mostly rural area and be a boon for students and faculty, as well as local residents.

There is a sleepy, Back to the Future movie-set vibe about Kutztown University, where tree-lined, two-lane, lamp-lit Main Street runs straight through the heart of the campus, surrounded by cornfields. Down the road is quaint Pop's Malt Shoppe; up the hill, NAPA Auto Parts; in between, lots of small shops and the stately brick-and-limestone buildings, circa 1900, where students live and classes are held. Want a tight-knit college town, 5,000 residents, 12,000 students? Hit the brakes, you're here.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, in the wee morning hours, someone walked up the front steps of Bob Haniwalt's house on South Walnut Street in West Chester and kicked in his front door. Young people urinate on the bushes outside his home and break limbs off young trees, he says. They smash windows and sometimes are so drunk they walk into the wrong house. He even says some of the first words his son spoke were "drunken college kids. " That is how life near West Chester University can be around 2 a.m. Haniwalt lives near downtown, where restaurants, nightlife and commercial success have created a destination for college students and young adults from around the region.