Editorial: Distance turned disconnect

Lehigh’s Taylor Stadium towered proudly over the sports field, brimming with students and fans. Situated between present-day Taylor Gym and Lower Cents dorms, the stadium was at the heart of campus.

“There was something really special about Taylor, and that was you could walk through campus on the way before the game, walking through everyone’s tailgate,” football player Mark McGowan, ‘89, said in an interview with The Brown and White.

When the football field moved to Murray H. Goodman Stadium in fall 1988, some of the game day spirit was lost due to decreased accessibility to the field.

Lehigh’s other athletic teams also moved to practice on Goodman Campus, and it became the new home for our sports teams.

There’s no denying that the ample space and facilities supported by donors like Goodman are beneficial for training and game play. The Philadelphia Eagles even used the campus as their spring training grounds from 1996 to 2012.

Despite fancy new facilities and more room to practice, the distance from Lehigh’s main campus to Goodman creates a disconnect, both physically and mentally, that is difficult to bridge.

The student section at football games, apart from the Lehigh vs. Lafayette Rivalry game is half-full at best. Attendance is often dominated by alumni and parents.

Even with the addition of Clutch’s Kettle, a student-run club that is a designated student section at games, attendance is low compared to the outpouring of alumni that used to attend games. 

The club successfully brought an influx of first-year students to the first game of the season, encouraging attendance with free food, merch, raffles and giveaways. Lehigh athletics also started running buses all day from Asa Packer campus up the hill to Goodman. 

But despite these efforts, throughout subsequent games, student attendance has dropped in comparison. 

Gone are the days of boisterous stands filled with students strolling through campus, stumbling upon the games right outside their dorms to cheer on friends and classmates.

Students are busy, but our college community should be a place where we support each other’s involvements and passions. 

Attending games now takes planning. Whether it’s looking at the bus schedule, hitching a ride in your friend’s car or making the long trek up the mountain without a sidewalk, the ease of cheering on our fellow Mountain Hawks was lost in 1988. Especially for students who don’t have a personal form of transportation. 

The Lehigh bus system increases accessibility, but still adds time to a commute. For disabled or temporarily injured students, there’s just one LU Access van to take students anywhere on campus. 

While both of these options can help, they add a significant time barrier in busy college students’ lives.

The disconnect on campus stems beyond athletics. Many research projects and art works are displayed on Mountaintop Campus. While it’s a shorter drive from Asa Packer campus, it’s still not easily accessible on foot.

This can pose a challenge for students looking to participate in research or who want to take a class on Mountaintop, needing to coordinate enough time in schedules to get there and return to campus for other classes. This is hard to accomplish in 10 minute passing periods, when the wait time for the bus is sometimes listed as 15 minutes. 

Individuals’ abilities to showcase their passions, whether it’s competing in a sports game or presenting research, is limited by the physical separation of our campuses.

We don’t even see campuses outside of Asa Packer on tours. They’re unfamiliar for many, and that unfamiliarity can lead to uncomfortability. 

While this is the fate of attending a college with prestigious athletics, research and academic programs on the side of a mountain, it’s an unfortunate reality that challenges the unity and strength of the Lehigh community.

While some students may never step foot in a Mountaintop research lab, and others may never trek up for a football game at Goodman, it’s important to remember we can still support each other from afar. There are ways for students to encourage each other’s interests without being physically in the stands.

With live-streaming and social media it’s easy to see game updates, share a research finding or tell your friends about the extracurriculars you’re involved in.

From 1988 to 2025, Lehigh’s culture has adapted to campus changes, not just through stadium relocations, but through technology, courses and student life. Using what is most accessible to all of us, the phones in our back pocket, we can make a large campus feel a lot smaller.

While online support doesn’t recreate the in-person camaraderie of over-packed stands and a cheering crowd, it preserves a part of our community that may have otherwise been lost.