I can't answer for Mehd School, but one of the reasons that the average person is happy to move on (to rotations or graduate or move away) is mostly because Harrogate is a very small place, with Knoxville being a whole hour or so away, with nothing really in the area to do.
Yes, there are local things to see and do. I know the Gap is having more events like campfire stories or having a haunted hay ride for October. There's a national park there so there's a million hiking trails. Then that's about it.
On the other side of the tunnel is where you'll probably be buying your groceries or getting the only bit of fast food in the whole area and choices are limited. If you pull up google maps and type in a few things, you'll be able to see how the area doesn't have a lot in terms of fun things to do.
As someone who's not a city person, I didn't have a problem with the ruralness of it. If I wanted to do go do something, I could check the school's monthly event page that gets sent out or see what things the Gap (it's a town) had planned, or if there was nothing. Then I'd just go for a hike.
I'm not a city person either, in the least bit. But the entire area there doesn't have any real places to eat, or shopping, or things...to do. It's like you're living on an island. Knoxville is an hour away, except that it's the most exhausting hour drive I've ever made and you won't have time or energy to go there more than once or twice a month. I had classmates that lived in knoxville and commuted for mandatory attendance things, and I envied them a little bit.
Why they chose to put this school in Harrogate and not knoxville is beyond me. Knoxville is a great little city, there are no medical schools there, and they have a ton of hospitals to train at. Seriously, they could have trained our whole class at hospitals in the knoxville and surrounding areas.
When I interviewed here everyone told me "oh it's great for studying. no distractions!" but holy **** guys. My classmates felt like we were in prison for 2 years. I don't think that wanting a decent coffee shop (there's one in the gap that's very decent if you have 30 minutes to burn waiting on a cappuccino) or a good place to eat or shop is too much to ask for. Finding someone to just cut my hair was an event all on its own. If you're into extremely rural places with zero resources, this is the place for you.
And the locals, while many are exceptionally nice, others are absolutely awful to be around and live near. It's a low income, low education area and a lot of my classmates were frankly treated like **** by some of the locals. And some of this is spilling over into crime at some of the university housing.
Again, I've loved this school for the most part. I've rotated along MD students from good schools and my knowledge and clinical skills are right up there with them, and that's due to my foundation at DCOM. But they really picked a truly awful location to place the school. I'm kind of dreading going back there just for graduation.