When your dorm is a Best Western | Morning Newsletter

Welcome to a mostly sunny Friday, Philly.

Weeks into the new academic year, enrollment figures for area colleges are a mixed (book)bag. While some don’t have enough students to pay the bills, others are converting hotels into dorms to house overflow. And at Temple University, an increase in Black freshmen is part of a growing picture of diversity at the North Philadelphia school.

Plus, we have more analysis from The Inquirer’s latest presidential poll of Pennsylvania voters, as well as an explainer on how to interpret any polling results.

Let’s get into it.

— Julie Zeglen (morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)

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Some undergrads’ dorm room walls are decorated with Polaroids of friends, that “Endless Summer” poster, or a signed cast photo from the first season of Glee (guilty). For 80 students at Widener University, it’s abstract hotel paintings and heavy drapes.

🏫 A handful of area colleges have bucked trends by boosting enrollment — and in the case of Chester-based Widener, where enrollment is up by about 2% this year, that’s meant moving some students into a nearby Best Western Plus.

🎒 Their gains come after years of declining populations at schools nationwide, compounded by tight budgets and a long-feared “enrollment cliff,” which results from fewer students graduating from high school.

Read on to learn which Philly-area schools have grown in the 2024-25 academic year, which are shrinking, and why one Widener RA’s friends think the hotel-dorm deal is actually kinda sweet.

📚 Another trend is reversing at Temple University: More than 1,450 Black students are enrolled in the North Philadelphia school’s first-year class, a 71% increase over last year.

✏️ The jump follows criticism of Temple in recent years for enrolling smaller percentages of Black students — especially because the school has historically positioned itself as an accessible local higher education option.

Temple officials attribute the change in part to efforts to recruit more public school students from the city.

Vice President Kamala Harris is narrowly leading former President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania polls. But with weeks to go before the general election, what does that really mean?

Polls are not predictions. Instead, they indicate how voters are feeling about the candidates at a given moment, and therefore how they might vote. Contributing to this squishiness, polls are calculated and interpreted differently depending on who’s running them.

Our interactives team breaks down current polling averages and explains the caveats behind the numbers.

That takes us to the review of more results of The Inquirer’s latest poll of Pennsylvania voters, conducted with The New York Times and Siena College after last week’s debate.

📊 Voters in Philadelphia: Harris has a commanding 63-point lead over Trump in the city — a stronger performance than President Joe Biden in May polls. Yet with less than seven weeks until the election, her campaign still faces challenges, including some voters’ lack of familiarity with her and the sagging voter turnout of recent years.

📊 On abortion: Pennsylvanians overwhelmingly trust Harris more than Trump on abortion. That could help her in the Philly suburbs, especially.

📊 On fracking: Poll respondents trust Trump more than Harris on fracking, an issue the Republican candidate has used as a battering ram against his opponent. But answers varied depending on respondents’ geography and other demographic factors.

Welcome back to Curious Philly Friday. We’ll feature both new and timeless stories from our forum for readers to ask about the city’s quirks.

This week, we have an explainer from reporter Michelle Myers on why the stately PMA looks so dim in the dark after a reader lamented the “shyness of such a gorgeous building.” Can’t the museum staff turn on a few more lights?

Blame infrastructure, money, and negotiations. More lighting is possible, yes — if the electrical grid gets an upgrade and the institution gets more capital investment. Here’s the full explanation.

Have your own burning question about Philadelphia, its local oddities, or how the region works? Submit it here and you might find the answer featured in this space.

Philadelphia International Airport just earned which distinction for the fourth year in a row?

A) Shortest baggage claim wait times

B) Prettiest plane-spotting views

C) Most expensive water bottle prices

D) Worst customer satisfaction

Think you know? Check your answer.

🍺 Attending: Next weekend’s Fishtown Fall Feastivale.

🌯 Visiting: The late-night truck market opening next to the Fillmore.

🏀 Still awaiting: A Philly WNBA team.

The plant-centered organization called the Pennsylvania _ _ will house the forthcoming Philly Tree Coalition program, which just got $12 million to grow the city’s tree canopy.

ULTERIOR ACTS TOUCHILY

Email us if you know the answer. We’ll select a reader at random to shout out here. Cheers to Michael White, who solved Thursday’s anagram: Giant Heart. The beloved science exhibit will be back on display at the Franklin Institute in November following an $8.5 million renovation.

🪿 One last competitive thing: Wawa just staked its claim in Sheetz territory by opening its first central Pennsylvania store. Columnist Stephanie Farr reports that hundreds of Wawa fans began lining up at 4:30 a.m. to get in — which makes me wonder how Philadelphians would react if Sheetz tried to drop a store in Center City. Would Wally Goose be there to throw stuffed plushies of himself at the interlopers?

And with that image in mind, enjoy your weekend. Ashley and Erin have you covered the next two days. I’ll see you back here Monday.

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