4400 Vestal Parkway is swarming with police. State police at that, dedicated to protect and ensure the safety of Binghamton University students, but also realistically to bust 18-, 19- and 20-year-old nuts for dumb mistakes made while away at college.

If you’re caught having a party in your suite with a few underage buddies and a 30-rack, it’s a couple years disciplinary probation, possible relocation and maybe even some parental notification. Should you refuse to identify yourself to a University official on top of that, you’ll be getting another six months of disciplinary probation.

With such harsh punishments for such small infractions, coupled with a police force large enough to hold down an Afghan town — a police force composed of State Po-Po at that — it doesn’t take much carelessness to get yourself in trouble on campus doing something that many people at our stages in life are bound to do at some point.

While we certainly should be grateful that Binghamton’s New York State University Police keep us safe on campus, the intensity of it all just seems like overkill, particularly when you consider the events that have been going on in Downtown Binghamton. Just last week this very newspaper ran a piece entitled “Students should consider city dangers, police said.” And gosh, is that true.

If you’ve been at BU for more than a year and don’t know someone or haven’t heard of someone getting jumped Downtown, then you’ve been living in Bartle for way too long. Off the top of my head I can think of four friends I have who have been attacked Downtown, not even near the bars — only about a block off of Main Street.

It makes one wonder if the allocation of resources in the law enforcement field is being properly spent in the Greater Binghamton area. While students on campus are well–protected by cops who often have nothing more pressing to do than bust in on sophomoric schemes to get drunk, high and take a five-finger discount on mozzarella sticks or arbitrarily shoot off a fire extinguisher, our peers are getting jumped, stabbed, robbed and abused on a weekly basis just about four miles away.

The story that ran in this paper last week noted University police’s Investigator Matthew C. Rossie’s belief that budget cuts for the Binghamton Police Department would result in a rise in violent crime within the city. Perhaps the University could be generous enough to protect its students who are off campus and redirect some of the funding invested in University police to Binghamton police then? Lord knows campus has enough state troopers to bust kids smoking hookah indoors at 3 a.m. when it’s 15 degrees outside — perhaps we can pay some of these guys to patrol the streets of Binghamton instead, the streets where so many BU students have found the punishment for walking down the block to be either a hard fist, a knife or even a gun.