Students don’t appreciate local members of the Binghamton community. It’s disrespectful and of poor character to disregard a community one ought to participate in and be a part of. Perhaps the disconnect between locals and students is due to the physical separation of Downtown and the campus. Maybe it can be attributed to the stigma of an “upstate vs. downstate” mentality. Maybe this attitude is due to misinformation.
Whatever the cause, local disrespect can indeed be rectified.
In 2013, Pipe Dream columnist Anita Raychawdhuri wrote a column, “Who you calling townie? Students are too rough on locals.” She argued that the community benefits the student body by providing us with access to employment and internship opportunities. But the community offers us so much more than that. The community offers a sense of place, a home, a place to create a home, to create a family or a life.
Raychawdhuri further explained that students should not feel entitled simply because we “fund the town.” It’s important to understand that the town also funds the students in many distinctive ways. All of the charms of Binghamton, from Tom & Marty’s and the Belmar to the Phelps Mansion Museum or the Barber Shop on Main Street, add to the social capital and cultural richness of our experience here as students.
If you look at the statistics of where Binghamton University alumni reside, 9,299 live in Broome County. That’s more than any other county in the nation, with the the second-highest alumni population in Nassau County. Ten percent of the population of Broome County graduated from BU.
It’s obvious that disrespectful behavior toward locals is inappropriate, but more importantly it’s based on misunderstanding and a distinct sense of separation. If we want to eliminate this sense of separateness, it will require more than refraining from mocking “townies.” It requires University students to develop an intimate appreciation for the small city of Binghamton.
If you search “Binghamton” on Urban Dictionary, one of the top posts, written by a Binghamton resident, described, “all the stuck up long island[ers] … that go to BU and do nothing but [complain] about how bad binghamton is” as the worst part of living in Binghamton. This poster urges these students to transfer if they don’t like it. This is not advice I would give. I would rather encourage the student body to do more than tolerate “townies.” Learn to appreciate the “townie” and local culture. Embrace it!
Binghamton is not at all a bad place to go to school, nor are the local people “dirty” or “uneducated hillbillies.” Professors, high school teachers, alumni, BU students, business owners, accountants, barbers, Sodexo employees, bar regulars, bartenders and homeless people all live here. It’s a community and it’s beautifully located between two noteworthy and free-flowing rivers. Sure, the city needs work, but even now, it has so much to offer us. It would have more to offer visits if we bothered to investigate and understand it more fully.