‘The best public university in the Northeast. Period.’

Binghamton University’s website talks big. As a ‘premier public university,’ BU boasts of incoming students with high SAT scores, top class rankings and diverse ethnic and geographical backgrounds. We’ve all heard the speeches at Admitted Students Day, seen the carefully designed brochures and know the impressive-sounding motto. Well, maybe not the latter.

But BU has, for the past decade, done even more to attract top students away from the likes of Cornell and Rochester. The Binghamton Scholars program selects 20 to 40 incoming students to be recognized for their credentials. This grants placement in a program that allows them to participate in a series of courses designed to enrich their University education through community service and seminar-style classes, and provides opportunities to connect with other scholars from all fields and walks of life.

There are concrete benefits, too. Scholars get the earliest access to classes, first-priority housing and a couple of scholarships to boot. But if you came to BU after 2007, you’re probably re-reading that last sentence.

In the past few years, the benefits of the scholars program have all but disappeared. Early registration is limited to tacking 24 credits onto your actual total. The first- and third-year scholarships don’t exist anymore. Students are not even offered admittance into the scholars program until they send in their acceptance letters. In fact, it seems as if the only pieces left in the scholars pie are the requirements: Maintain a 3.25 GPA at all times; fulfill two community service-oriented leadership courses; participate in an internship, study abroad program or tutoring/mentoring; take two four-credit seminar courses on various topics and earn honors, complete a capstone project or write a thesis in your particular department.

As a scholar, these educational opportunities shouldn’t really be burdens. Let’s be serious, though. Academic overachievers are people too, and we want to see something real in it for us. What happened to using the program to attract the best and brightest to the Southern Tier’s SUNY center? And trying to compete with the prestigious private institutions that many accepted BU students have to choose from?

Binghamton is ‘premier’ for many reasons, but there is one thing that the University would do well not to forget: the students. Instead of having a scholars program only to pay lip service to an honors opportunity for undergraduates, while insisting that it is not an ‘honors program,’ BU should be making use of the program as a tool to continue to bring in top talent. If the administration expects to maintain the status quo without doing anything to cultivate it, they will soon find themselves losing out to the likes of the University at Buffalo, which has a full-blown and very well-established honors program.

So come on, Binghamton. The ability to make my schedule through first-priority registration was a big component of what made my four years here so successful and rewarding, and there’s not much course flexibility with my major. Is it really such a problem to let a few dozen students register before some 11,500 others if it means a big boost for the University’s reputation? Prestige comes not from saying you’re prestigious, but from your talented alumni who bring esteem and money back to their alma mater.

So please, BU: Think of the nerds.