Student Exodus

As the academic year finally nears an end in the UK and here in Exeter all the students have started to make their way home for the Easter holidays. The city centre vastly changes when this happens as there are no more young and excitable people making their way to and from the campus at all hours of the day, the streets are a little quieter as no loud music blares from the houses accompanied by the sounds of fun and laughter. No it’s all gone a little dark as most of the 30,000 or so students that dominate the inner city have trundled home or to some exotic place as there are no more classes to miss.

The student population is responsible for the majority of the stranger things we see in the city, in particular at night when you can see people dressed up for a night out, smurfs, indians & cowboys, cops & robbers, the possibilities are endless. All this does have an effect on the local economy as when they are all gone spending goes down and I think TimePiece must become a desolate wasteland, but maybe it’s all worth it as you know to expect the unexpected.

Of course this means getting around the city is much easier now and Costa will be that little bit quieter. But is Exeter really just a city in it’s own right….sure there are 111,000 people that live in Exeter but 30,000 is quite a big number to just up and vanish for four weeks. Like Oxford or Cambridge I think we must consider Exeter as less of a city with a university but a university with a city; there are so many activities throughout the city that students enjoy and half of the nightclubs would be closed had the student population not descend upon their doors 5 nights a week. What I guess I am pondering here is that whilst we wait for the noise and sound of parties to return does Exeter slow down that little bit and become that little more boring….