Move-in day would be controlled chaos on any college campus.
But when the campus is on the busiest north-south street of the sixth-largest city in the country, well, that calls for a plan.
And plan they did at Temple University yesterday.
The drill was the same for everyone:
Pull up to curb.
Get room key.
Get cart.
Unload car.
Move on.
Ten minutes tops.
No exceptions.
"We keep it moving in and out," said Michael Scales, Temple's director of university housing, who led the operation in his Owl-red "Welcome Week" shirt. "We have the routine down pretty pat."
And except for thicker-than-usual midday traffic on Broad Street from Dauphin Street to Girard Avenue, move-in day came off without a hitch. Students and their entourages arrived at a clip of 400 an hour, with about 2,000 arriving yesterday and even more due today.
It is the first sign of the summer's end - the annual dorm trek of college students, toting laptops and televisions (flat screens are a must-have this season), with parents in tow.
Yesterday's scene at Temple will play out all over the area, where 88 universities and colleges in an 11-county region enroll 360,600 students.
It is Temple's good fortune that yesterday was so busy. The freshman class of 4,300 is the largest ever - up 6 percent from a year ago.
The university also has seen a spike in the number of students living on campus or nearby. With a reputation as a commuter school, Temple now has 10,000 of its 23,000 undergraduate students living in dorms or nearby apartments. "Five years ago, it easily was half that," said Ray Betzner, a Temple spokesman.
Surprisingly, the school has not added any new dormitories in recent years. Instead, private developers have more than doubled the housing space for incoming students. One new complex alone - The Edge, near Broad and Cecil B. Moore Avenue - can house 1,200 people.
"Students are telling us they love the urban environment and want to live close to campus," Betzner said.
"Some come from monochromatic high schools, and they want a university experience that looks and feels like the world they'll be entering," he said.
The university also is finding that more and more students hope to stay in Philadelphia. A 2006 survey found that 64 percent of students wanted to stay in the area to live or work - up from 57 percent in 2004.
For five hours yesterday, a steady procession of vans, trucks and cars pulled in front of Hardwick and Johnson Halls, their crews snapping into action to unload boxes and bags.
One of the new students was Jazmine Tooles, 18, of Franklin Township in northern New Jersey.
"It's going fine," said her mother, Liz Tooles, waiting next to her daughter's pile under a temporary white canopy.
"Huh?!" disagreed Jazmine. She and her 11-year-old sister, Brooke, were not happy about climbing 10 flights to her room - twice already - as her father waited for the elevator in a marathon line.
"Up and down and up and down," said Brooke, her arms filled with another load.
Jazmine plans to study physical therapy. Of Philadelphia, she said: "It's different for me."
Her mother added: "She grew up in the suburbs, which is one of the reasons she's so fascinated with Temple. The hustle and bustle - that's the fun part for her."
Leigh Cignavith, 18, another freshman who will study architecture, brought two carloads of provisions from her home in Budd Lake, also in North Jersey. She and her family unpacked in eight minutes.
She said she was drawn to urban living. "I'm from the suburbs, and I wanted to be in the city," she said, while waiting for her brother and father to help with hauling her gear.
Christopher Le, 18, also was attracted to the city.
He lives in Lancaster County. "I like the atmosphere here," said Christopher, who will study hospitality management. "I like how everything is so close together."
Helping him move in were his father, a grandfather, an aunt and a cousin.
"Temple is the talk of the town," said his father, Chieu Le. "It's very popular with Vietnamese people from Lancaster."
Before taking everything into the dorm hall, Chieu Le stood back. He raised his camera and took picture after picture, recording this moment of his son joining the Class of 2011.
.
