I have come to the conclusion that Binghamton University is taunting me.
Not half a week after I came to the conclusion that the BU administration doesn’t care about its student body, there was a meeting in the Couper Administration Building.
It could have gone something like this:
“This isn’t right,” all members of the Dark Council said. “This isn’t right at all.”
“He doesn’t understand,” University spokesman Ryan Yarosh said.
“It’s not that we don’t care about the students,” James Van Voorst, vice president for administration, said.
“We don’t care about the professors, either,” BU President Lois DeFleur said.
And so, after this lengthy planning session, they apparently decided to tell us all how they really felt by tossing piles of professors’ sensitive information into an unlocked, unmarked dumpster (again) for WHRW’s news department to find (again).
The terrible, sad thing is that this has all become commonplace and mundane. The only reason I was remotely shocked was that this time, professors were victimized. But now, we know that nobody’s safe. Except, presumably, administrative staff.
Binghamton is a schizophrenic place, my friends. While all of this was going on, most of the student body was more concerned with Mike Lombardi and his now infamous command to Vice President for Finance Alice Liou to “go eat a dog.” If you attended Spring Fling, you probably saw a line of students demonstrating against “rampant racism in the Student Assembly.”
We need to move on.
There are a lot of issues on campus that require our attention — the tuition hike, for one — and we need to address them as a unified body. This isn’t some stupid call to arms, and I’m not speaking metaphorically. We have to stand together because it’s the only way we can get anything accomplished given the current administrative practices.
It’s very easy to get distracted by the random acts of bullshit around here. If my first year at BU has taught me anything, it’s that. Just do us all a favor and think about your fellow students. Disregard the slanted eyes and pay no attention to the translucent white skin. Realize that it doesn’t matter whether or not they can jump.
We have to get to the point where we look at each other and see fellow students, and we have to get there mighty quick. We have to stand up and show the administration that we won’t be toyed with, that their incomprehensible games are over and done with. And we can’t do it like this.
— Sam Riedel is a freshman English and rhetoric major.