Campus Philly College Day welcomed all students Saturday, Sept. 27 who attend college in the Philadelphia area to participate in an all-day, free extravaganza to kick off the start of a new school year.
Students escaped the campus life, and ventured out into the streets of Philly to experience a day of free museums, music, food, shopping and socializing with other students from nearby Philadelphia schools.
Students from all over were enthusiastic about the exhibitions, programs and free passes to 11 different institutions. Shuttle buses were even available to take you around to the different museums.
“The shuttle buses made it so much easier to visit more museums in less time than walking. I got a lot more out of the free museums offered with the help from the buses taking me from place to place,” Marianne Lucarelli, junior pharmaceutical marketing major from Saint Joseph’s University, said.
All of the institutions were open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., which gave everyone the opportunity to experience as many institutions as they wanted.
“We got to the city around 1 p.m. and stayed until 8:30 p.m. so we were pretty much there all day. My friends and I went to The Franklin Institute, The Philadelphia Art Museum and The Eastern State Penitentiary. It was a lot of fun and there were a lot of people from surrounding colleges,” Tara Evison, junior psychology major, said.
This is an annual event organized by the City of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and 10 other institutions.
The other institutions available were the Rodin Museum, Free Library of Philadelphia, the Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Franklin Institute, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the National Constitution Center and the Eastern State Penitentiary.
“It took a lot of people to make this event successful. This year we had a cultural partners tent of representatives from the respective places to make it more organized and offer more information to the students. This brought more students out and interested in what was going on at Campus Philly College Day,” Mathew Palczynski, staff lecturer for Western Art, said.
