As Lehman Brothers collapsed and worry for American International Group extended Wall Street’s weeklong slide, Binghamton University’s own to-be financiers began to question their career paths (see Page 1).
It must be frightening for School of Management students to see their intended industry enter into such disarray, but they’re not the only ones unnerved. We are also perplexed: the students who went into other fields, into other schools and have wondered late at night, “Why didn’t I go into SOM?” as thoughts of debt, a cramped apartment and other realities crept in.
Not that SOM students will be migrating to, say, Harpur College, any time soon. Wall Street rebounded late Thursday, closing about half the week’s 800-point gap which opened the day. And Wednesday’s Career Fair maintained the old order of the world, with virtually no opportunities dedicated to Harpur students and too many tables for SOM students to visit in one trip.
But for those graduating soon, be it with a degree that guarantees a cushy-but-perhaps-unfulfilling 9-to-5 job or not, you’re going to feel the effects of the bailouts and the collapses. Change, be it from this political administration or the next, should be effected soon, and it doesn’t matter where you end up after BU: you’ll feel it.
For those who will stay in Binghamton a while longer, perhaps long enough to see a turnaround, it’s hard to imagine that the city which lends the University its namesake will be able to get itself any further out of the decades-old rut IBM left it in.
Tonight, a group that charges itself with the task of improving town-gown relations and stimulating the local economy, Catalysts for Intellectual Capital 2020, is hosting the Binghamton Blowout Block Party on Court Street (See Page 5). It’ll be five hours of a spirited attempt to shine Binghamton and its economy in a positive light.
The party should be fun, maybe even encouraging, but nothing more than a nightlong event. Court Street doesn’t have better days ahead of it while Wall Street is still floundering.