Wesleyan University is located in Middletown, Connecticut, a town situated, surprisingly, in the middle of Connecticut. Despite its name, Middletown is in fact a city, with a bustling Main Street located down the hill from Wesleyan’s campus. Wesleyan students interact with Middletown in a variety of ways, utilizing the town’s commercial and gastronomic resources, as well as contributing to the greater Middletown community. Wesleyan students offer more to Middletown than just their business. Through outreach efforts like tutoring at the local schools, mentoring at Traverse Square – an apartment complex next to one of Wesleyan’s residences – and holding classes at the Green Street Arts Center, a collaborative community effort run jointly by Wesleyan and Middletown, Wesleyan students have a strong relationship built on the tradition of service to the community in which they live.

Wesleyan's campus is pretty, grassy, and spacious. Foss Hill, the main quad, lies next to the football field and is surrounded by a representative jumble of buildings: a library designed by the same man as the Lincoln Memorial, a chapel-turned-theater, a glass pavilion, several dorms, and a gleaming new campus center that tends to appeal to adults but which students generally find oddly-designed, bland, and sterile. Also bordering Foss Hill is WEShop, the campus convenience store. WEShop offers a lot more organic options than a store of its kind normally might, but as at many colleges, students complain about the unusually-high prices there. Opinions are also mixed about the Center for the Arts buildings, or CFA. These buildings, designed in the passing Brutalist style, look cool to some, hideous to others. Overall the campus is entirely walkable—many students own cars but one could certainly do without one.

At Wesleyan first and some second-year students live in the residence halls on campus, while returning students and upperclassmen have the option of living in fully-furnished apartments on campus, the fully-furnished Woodframe houses, or in various theme houses, including several of the officially-recognized fraternities. As a first-year, students are mostly likely to live in the new dorms Fauver and Clark. Fauver, the very newest, is most notable for its large lobbies with big screen TVs. First-years also live in Nicholson (Nic), Hewitt, West College (Westco), Butterfield (The Butts), or 200 Church. Hewitt is notable for some single-gender floors (most dorms have co-ed floors) and some substance-free floors, and Westco has a degree of self-government. Known as one of the more “creative” dorms, Westco is unofficially clothing optional, though residents usually keep their clothes on. The halls of the Butts wind around in an unusual pattern—they were designed that way to be riot-proof, and they may be one of the reasons the Butts are a little bit less sociable than the other dorms. 200 Church is located in a relatively old building which formerly housed the Chi Psi fraternity.

The Wesleyan Cardinals compete at the Division III level and in the New England Small College athletic Conference. As reported by Alex Gelman ’08: Even considering that Wesleyan is on the lowest rung of the tripartite NCAA ladder, there isn’t an overwhelming abundance of school spirit towards athletics. Wesleyan does play in the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), the most competitive conference in all of Division III. Some of the most popular teams, often tied to success, are the men’s lacrosse team, the men’s soccer team, and, recently, the women’s volleyball team. Also, it has been reported that Wesleyan’s men’s baseball team has the highest average attendance in all of Division III. However, it should be noted that the field where the Wesleyan sluggers play their games is located at the foot of Foss Hill, a popular lounging destination for students in the springtime looking to soak up some sun and relax. While hundreds of students can dot Foss Hill on a sunny April Saturday, the number of those who actually realize that a baseball game is going on is probably somewhere in the teens.