Cue the dust, get the wind and roll the tumbleweeds: we have a ghost town in our hands. Ashland University consists of more than 2,000 students. This great number, however, seems to go amiss every weekend. More than half of the students leave the university’s campus every weekend.

The campus is almost deserted nearly each and every weekend. The classes have ended, the bags are packed, the cars are started, and students journey from the academic setting to a more homely and familiar atmosphere. Why do students leave, though? Why are the buildings, dormitories and grounds so empty and bare? For the answer to this question, who better to ask than the students of Ashland University themselves?

Junior Tina Holifield is one of the many students who go home each weekend.

“I go home and work,” Holifield said. “I’m paying for school…Throughout the week I work as a student worker, and then on the weekends I go home to work as well.”

However, there are the few students who do not go home. Sophomore Jill Holland is among those students. Holland says she enjoys going home, but she doesn’t want to go home all the time; preferably once a month.

“When I’m on campus,” Holland said, “I usually hang out with my friends: watch movies, order pizza, listen to music – just hang out…If I go home then I’ll usually be doing homework.”

Some students don’t get the opportunity to go home every weekend, or as much as they’d like. Senior Rachael Ausdenmoore encounters this problem, as she serves as a member of the Ashland University swim team, and is from Texas.

“[I usually go home] Christmas and summer,” Ausdenmoore said. Though her weekends consist of swim meets and hanging out with friends, she says she wouldn’t change this even if she were closer to home.

Joseph Paulucci can relate to Ausdenmoore’s busy weekends. He is an athlete as well, and often spends his weekends with his teammates at track meets on Fridays or Saturdays, and returns to Ashland to sleep. When Paulucci does not have a track meet, he also hangs out with his friends and works on his homework.

“We typically don’t go out of state for our meets,” Paulucci said. “They’re relatively close – a few hours at the most – but I don’t typically leave for an entire weekend. I’m still here.”

Paulucci likewise does not go home on the weekends unless there is an emergency or a holiday or season break in the university. He notices, however, that many other students go home on the weekends.

“[Ashland] seems to be more of a commuter school,” Paulucci said. He also commented that the majority of students who live in Ashland tend to “go out” and spend time with their friends.

Commuter Abbie Bartholomew does not totally deny Paulucci’s claim.

“I think that’s true,” she said, “but I have a lot of friends that live here, and even friends from the area that could commute live here.”

Bartholomew believes that students may go home because of the lack of activities that there are in Ashland. Kelsie Hoover, who is also a commuter, makes her own fun with her friends. They take part in listening to music, riding their bikes and simply hanging out.

Hoover disagrees with Paulucci.

“…It’s all what you make of it,” she says. “You just have to look and see what you can find.”

Ashland’s variety of students spend their weekends in a variety of ways. While some students stay on campus to study and spend time with their friends, many forsake Ashland to go home and be with their families, to work or to handle emergencies. There is not a single answer to explain what students do during the weekend. Whatever they do, the campus remains almost deserted and lonely on the weekends. And so, the tumbleweed continues to roll.