Hi, my name is Vaughan, and I'm a junior at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism.
I study sports journalism and I've lived downtown for three years, and I'm really
excited to talk about it.
I'm here at the ASU charter. ASU is a school that
measures itself by whom we include and not by whom we exclude, and you can see that right here.
Downtown is a really big and bustling area, and it's perfect if
you want to study something that contributes to public purpose. I'm gonna
take you guys all around downtown today if you want to follow me.
So just behind me here is the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass
Communications, also known as my house because I spend just as much time there
as I do at my apartment. We have Arizona PBS here on the fifth
floor and we have a full-fledged TV studio on the sixth floor. So if you're
interested in journalism work you can definitely join us here at Cronkite.
So I'm in a plaza here with Health North and Health South.
This is if you're
studying nursing or health solutions, you're gonna be taking a lot of your
classes here, and also just right behind me there's a student-run cafe where
everything is sold at cost, so you can get a really, really cheap lunch.
So right behind me is the Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law. It is the newest
constructed building on campus and, as you can tell, it is very beautiful. Sandra
Day O'Connor is a graduate program here at ASU, and some of our majors in
downtown, like journalism, are pre-law so you can go just from right over there to
right here. And now we're gonna head to the next spot.
So right here is gonna be the campus store. This is where you're gonna pick up any books that you
may have ordered at the campus store, and then we also have ASU swag as well.
So we are here in the University Center at the center of the university. Haha — that's
kind of a joke. There are actually about seven floors in this building, so there's
a lot of stuff going on. On the very lowest floor is our Information Commons,
which is just fancy talk for “library.” We have a few classrooms on a few of the
floors, so if you have any professors that have classes in here, they're gonna
have offices on the fourth and fifth floor so you can head to them for office
hours. We also, just behind me, have the ASU Police Department — so if you have any
questions for them, they're gonna be right there. We also have something
called our Tutoring Center. Our Tutoring Center is a completely free service for
any class you can take on the Downtown campus. It's really helpful because if
you're struggling, you have a student that has taken the class and has passed
the class with flying colors to kind of help you out.
Behind me here is the Transit Center.
If you're looking to park on campus, we can get you a parking pass,
and if you're looking to ride around campus on a bike, we can register your
bike with us here as well. And just out these doors is going to be our ASU
shuttle system. If you're looking to travel to the Tempe campus, it is free, it
is air-conditioned and it has Wi-Fi — and it is super convenient. The shuttles
leave every 15 minutes and they'll take you to our other three campuses in the
general ASU area.
So we are here at Civic Space Park.
It's a collaboration between downtown Phoenix and Downtown ASU to give ASU a space to hold events down
here. We do Puppies in the Park every semester — you might be even able to adopt
a dog. It's really, really cute. And then we also do a battle of the bands here
every year. I'm not gonna say anything ... but I think my band was robbed last year!
So we have "Her Secret is Patience" behind me as well — this is my favorite spot on
the tour. It's our piece of public art. We always
say Chicago has the Bean, New York has the Statue of Liberty and we have
“Her Secret is Patience."
You caught me at the post office!
This building is a little interesting — it's one-half historical building and one-half ASU building.
The historical half is it's the oldest surviving post office in Phoenix, and the
ASU half is it's a student center — it's designed by students for students. So
there's a pool table, a foosball table, a TV, some arcade cabinets, and some great
places for you to study and hang out.
So just behind me right here is the Westward Ho. It's one of our historical buildings in downtown Phoenix. ASU
Downtown has decided to use the bottom floor, and now that it's low income
housing, the bottom floor is going to be used for our social work at the Watts College.
And then the Westward Ho — also if you seen Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho,"
the first scene of that entire movie, of the establishing shot is of downtown
Phoenix and it’s shot out of that top window over there.
I'm gonna take a little break and tell you about the city life here in downtown
Phoenix. The first Friday of every month we have something called
First Friday. It's an art festival in downtown Phoenix. There's live bands, there's live
artists and you can buy stuff to hang up on your wall — it's super-duper fun. We
also have professional sports stadiums down here. We have student ticket options
available for the Arizona Diamondbacks and for the Phoenix Suns, so if you want
to catch some live sports like I do, you can definitely go ahead and head over to
those arenas.
So I'm just gonna briefly talk about the levels of safety that we
have on campus. We have our Phoenix PD, which has one of the best first-response
times in the nation, and then we also have our ASU PD and they're always all
around on campus here. Just behind me is we have something called the Blue-Light
System. The Blue-Light System is something at every major college campus
around America, and the way that it works is if you press a button, then ASU PD
will kind of join you at that button that you press right away. But if you
need to keep walking, you can press multiple buttons along with the blue
lights on top, and they will meet you at the last button that you pressed.
So here we are at Taylor Place. We're in a nice little shade garden. This is our
residential hall in downtown Phoenix. We have a residential-style living — so
you're gonna have one roommate and that is it. And you're not going to share any
communal bathrooms — you have your own bathroom, which is absolutely wonderful.
The only problem is you have to clean it. But we have a couple of different styles
of living. We have Tower 1, which is just one room with two beds, and then we
have Tower 2, which is a suite-style room where you walk in and then you have two
beds separated by a wall in two different rooms. So whether or not you
want your privacy or you want to sleep 10 feet from someone and become best
friends, you have your options here. So on our ground floor here is gonna be our
dining hall so you don't have to go anywhere to eat. It's gonna be open from
7 a.m. all the way to 10 p.m. so whenever you're hungry, you can get some
food. We also have our security desks here. The building locks (except to
residents) after 5 p.m. and then we have security guards at the desk for 24
hours a day.
So we are here at the Sun Devil Fitness and Wellness Complex, or the SDFC, as I
like to call it. There's a few really great things at the SDFC — we have a
gigantic gym and we also are partnered with the YMCA, so we have twice the space
to workout. The YMCA also has a lap pool and a sauna that we're allowed to use,
which is really nice. And then on the ASU side, we have a basketball court and then
we also have a rooftop pool. I know that's probably a joke at your high
school that there's a pool on the roof ... but there's actually a pool on the roof!
It's really, really great and you can actually get a job as a lifeguard there
The SDFC is the number one employer on campus, so you can have the most glamorous
job, which is the rooftop pool lifeguard. You can also be a desk worker, you can
become a personal trainer or you can teach a fitness class — and we also have
intramurals.
So I'm standing here at the Arizona Center. There are a few
multi-purpose classrooms in here — but the best thing of note is that there is
an AMC here that does $5 movie tickets, and there's a couple of
restaurants that take your meal plan as well.
So we are here at the Mercado.
This is the headquarters for Barrett, The Honors College on the Downtown campus, so
if you have any Barrett-related needs they’re going to be just right behind me
here. We also have a few various classrooms mostly used for nursing, but
you might have a few foreign language classes in here as well. And then we also
just have the Hungry Devil Cafe over here — that's my favorite place to grab food.
Thanks so much for joining me on this tour! I love downtown Phoenix a lot. It's
the perfect mix of historical buildings like the Westward Ho, and new buildings
that are being built. Just behind me right here is going to be a new
residence hall for ASU students, so we can have more people join us.
The city of Phoenix is really near and dear to my heart, so I'm really glad you could share
this with me today.