Temple Tough

My mother begged me not to go to Temple University. We toured the campus on a cold, blustery, rainy spring day in 1977 when I was a high school junior. We’d driven through the surrounding North Philly neighborhood, past burned-down buildings, piles of garbage in the streets. Our car was towed while I was meeting with a financial aid officer. She and my father came up with a list of alternatives, nice small colleges that looked like the sort of places you’d feel comfortable packing off your teenage daughter to attend. But, my mind was made up. Temple is the only university to which I bothered to apply.

My mother cried the day she dropped me off at my dorm room in Johnson Hall with my belongings—clothes and cheap bedding, towels, and a stereo I bought at K-Mart with my summer job earnings. She hated everything about Temple: its utter lack of ivy or anything green, its cement block buildings that were built quickly in the mid-70s to accommodate an enrollment boom, its proximity to “bad” neighborhoods and downtown, its lack of campus life—Temple was, and still is, mainly a commuter school. In a college town that boasts the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel, St. Joseph’s, and LaSalle, Temple was the second-class citizen, a gritty, urban school founded specifically to bring higher education to the masses. One of Temple’s marketing campaigns while I was attending featured an array of students with impressive academic records and the tagline: “I could have gone anywhere, but I chose Temple.” The inference there being that those of us at Temple were there because it was our only option.

I majored in journalism and interned at the Pulitzer prize-winning Philadelphia magazine. While interviewing for the internship, the then managing editor, Bill Tonelli, told me I was up against students from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania. Then, in a line similar to the first Wall Street movie, he told me he’d take a Temple student any day over an Ivy Leaguer. He added, “Temple kids are tough.”

We had to be tough. In the late 70s/early 80s, less than 10% of the student body lived on campus. From Friday afternoon to Monday morning, the campus looked like a ghost town. You could stroll across campus and not run into another soul. Not one food vendor. No cafes or shops. No movies. Not even a bar. We had to come up with our own entertainment. We had to branch off campus and into the surrounding neighborhoods, down to Center City if we wanted something to do. We saw almost every concert that came to the Spectrum and Veterans Stadium. Often we couldn’t afford the tickets. No problem there though. Several dorm students worked as security guards at the concert venues and snuck us in.

There we were, a bunch of kids from the Philly suburbs and the suburbs of Pittsburgh and Erie, from Scranton and the towns of New Jersey. We came from high schools with graduating classes of 300 or so. We grew up in sheltered, homogenous environments. Temple itself was our real education. We developed street smarts. We learned resilience and independence. We became strong.

We also became a tribe of tight friends who looked out for each other. My college friends are still my closest friends. Friendships born of chance and convenience and necessity turned into relationships that have survived decades and distance and all kinds of conflict. Our friendships are unshakeable because of our shared experiences at college. We moved en masse to the Fairmont neighborhood of Philly after our sophomore years in college. We have lived together, traveled together, partied together, shared clothes, food, makeup, music, laughter, tears. We’ve gone through divorces and cancer and losses of friends, siblings, and parents together. And, instead of fading, our friendships have grown stronger.

Any school could have taught me the fundamentals of writing, could have trained me for the job I have today. But Temple gave me an education I couldn’t get in class. I have traveled extensively in remote parts of the world alone. I have the confidence to do that because I know I’m tough.

Temple has changed tremendously since I graduated in the 80s. More and more students are choosing to live on campus. The campus is now dotted with cafes and smoothie shops and pubs. Buildings have received facelifts. The reputation is morphing from Philly’s other college to one of respect and gravitas. Our School of Communications and Media is in the spotlight, helping legacy newspapers—the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Dallas Morning News, the Miami Herald—adapt to the digital age. Our football team, ranked 21 nationally, is 7-1, its only loss to the 7th ranked juggernaut of wealthy Notre Dame. For the first time ever, Temple University was on ABC TV, a nationally televised broadcast for College Game Day. The odds were against us—some analysts were predicting Notre Dame would win by 20 points. The final score was 24-20; we almost pulled off the upset against a formidable opponent. In our loss, we showed our most notable school characteristic: toughness.

I’m proud of my alma mater. I’m proud to be a once naive, coddled teenager who grew into a strong, resilient woman. I am proud to be Temple Tough.