Story By Ashlyn Creasman
Contributing Writer
What is it that makes a college town a great college town?
It all comes down to what a particular community has to offer for its college students.
Some towns are completely built around and thrive upon the college community, while other towns and cities have their own pace of life with a college thrown in.
The latter describes Durant.
I’ve been living in Durant for a few years now and have been attending Southeastern Oklahoma State University. In this time, I’ve discovered that Durant just doesn’t really have that “college town” feel to it.
Having a university in a town is beneficial to the businesses around and could be even more beneficial if the town businesses started to support Southeastern and to work making Durant more of a college town.
Southeastern has great athletic teams, but what we don’t see much of is town support for those teams. Small town colleges are usually the best college towns because they usually show great support for college athletic programs.
Not everyone is into sports or has time to attend every game, but even if the town members simply wore the school colors on a game day, that would show great support.
Another reason Durant isn’t much of a college town is because there is nothing for college kids to do.
At the heart of most college towns are tons of small businesses and hang outs where students are welcome and appreciated. Durant doesn’t really have either of those things.
As much as I would like to see Durant become more of a college town, I don’t see it happening anytime soon.
I don’t think the Durant community realizes how much more they would benefit if they were to show more support for the college and college students.