Has a rainbow come to Mount Pleasant in Tredyffrin? Not sure exactly, but a mighty fine centerpiece article from The Philadelphia Inquirer has arrived.
I am so happy for the very beleaguered residents of this small historic neighborhood. I am honestly really happy that a bona fide reporter listened to what the residence had to say and wrote about it fairly.
See Tredyffrin? Told ya.
See Villanova University? Others do care about Mount Pleasant, even if your off-campus students and student rental slumlords there do not and just out of curiosity how many of those student rental landlords are alumni?
Yes there is a paywall but I actually know someone who subscribed today just so they could read this article. Tredyffrin’s inactive chickens are coming home to roost in Mt. Pleasant with this article. A reporter, the photographer to look into what has been even documented on social media.
This is a large article and I hope the message has been received that it is time to stop offering lip service, and deal with this.
As for Tredyffrin Supervisor Carlotta Johnson-Pugh who was quoted? She really shouldn’t dance. She should just say what the residents tell her: if this wasn’t a historically black neighborhood, people would care more. THAT is the truth and reality.
I don’t know where half of these Tredyffrin Supervisors were years ago when the original student housing ordinance was coming in to play, but I remember quite clearly how much it took them just to get around to doing an ordinance. It was somewhat disgraceful it took so long. And maybe the police department only has a certain number of calls on the books for the school year 2025 to 2026, but I have to ask were all of the calls investigated? Are the residents taken seriously?
This is what one neighbor said in the article:
📌 “When the parents aren’t getting on them, the college is not getting on them, the police are not getting on them, and then you got the neighbors, and all we can do is make a little fuss, but there’s not a lot we can do,”📌
This is a centerpiece article IMHO. The curtain has been lifted beyond a curtain raiser. Tredyffrin’s zoning officer is lazy at a minimum and could be doing more.
The township manager wasbrought up by Dave Bashore in Radnor before Tredyffrin (https://patch.com/pennsylvania/radnor/scoop-what-happened-to-dave-bashore) is a Tredyffrin RESIDENT (https://www.mainlinemedianews.com/2018/02/15/main-line-banter-meet-tredyffrin-township-manager-bill-martin/) so he should care more about a lot of things than he does. He can be a part of the solution. These residents have deserved better than what they have received for YEARS.
Carpe Diem. Tredyffrin supervisors and staff need to walk the walk not just talk the talk.
Allow one more (brief) quote from the Inquirer article today from Villanova University:
📌“Students are subject to the University’s Code of Student Conduct whether they are on- or off-campus, and the University follows up on all reports it receives from local municipalities,” the spokesperson said in a statement.📌
Ok good to know based upon this familiar email. I say familiar because I’ve been told people have received variations on the same theme:
Now to be fair, in the past I have found Villanova’s security folks helpful to residents to the best of their ability. But heavier lifting needs to come from Villanova University decision makers. I think they promised to be better during that meeting last year with residents once they acquired Cabrini?
A lot of schools in this country have directories on file for where all of their off-campus students are residing correct? Why can’t Villanova do this? I think I’ve been asking this for like over 20 years haven’t I? Why can’t they have a better grip on where these kids are living and how they are behaving vis à vis their policies they have in place for their students in general?
https://www.villanova.edu/university/offcampus/information-for-undergraduates.html
You know when you talk to these residents, they understand the college students want to have fun because a lot of them were college students once upon a time. However, these are literally animal houses that Mount Pleasant has been dealing with for far too long. And there needs to be palpable culpability on the part of the property owners who are renting these houses, perhaps?
I think this is a big stay tuned thing because I think this is a story that’s going to keep growing until the problems are solved in Tredyffrin like in Mount Pleasant.
Here is past stuff:
https://www.tehistory.org/hqda/html/v12/v12n1p002.html
