By Arthur O’Sullivan
The pope is Catholic, bears defecate in the woods, and students gripe about Binghamton and her university.
This isn’t unexpected. Whether it’s here or Harvard, it’s always in fashion to complain and commiserate with others about the thing for which you’re paying five or six figures each year. Virtually all small talk ends in some bemoaning of the weather and its mysterious ways (60 degrees in August?!), the baffling choice to begin construction on major roads after students move in, or the latest story of gross mismanagement at a dorm or off-campus rental. It’s not like these issues are illegitimate, but people easily get carried away. Indulging the “complaining” instinct too often will only stick you and your friends (those that stick around, anyways) in an endless whirlpool of petty grievance. Sooner or later, your only topics of conversation will be on how much things suck. What’s more: your conversation partners will invariably be just as, if not more miserable than you already are—“misery breeds company,” after all.
I speak from some experience here: I’ve spent the past four years in this magazine griping about things that annoyed me in Binghamton, or even things completely outside of Binghamton over which I had no control. (I’d like to memory-hole my foreign policy article for the age of the current Binghamton Review.) In my own small way, I contributed to this cycle of misery on a mass-scale. Negativity sells, and it’s a lot easier to write agitated rather than comfortable.
That’s why I’m writing this article—for the benefit of both freshmen and returning students. Open “pride” in Binghamton seems pretty rare—more often seen in alumni than students themselves. I scarcely see anybody wearing “Bearcat” colors or merchandise. But I don’t think this is necessarily bad. When I talk to alumni, they may not appreciate their alma mater as boisterously as, say, Florida State, but the sentiment is still there—in a more quiet, contented form. This is the spirit that I think more students should have. When you drag yourself out of my aforementioned “whirlpool of petty grievance,” and consider the things that brought you here—as opposed to some other university where you would probably be just as miserable—you’ll find your time in college easier to go through. You’ll find the flaws of this university, while still annoying, diminished in size or importance. You may even decide, like I did, to come back for a graduate degree because you spent more time writing for Binghamton Review than actually deciding on a career path.
The following, therefore, are the things I learned to appreciate in the four (soon to be six) years I’ve spent at Binghamton University. This is not an exhaustive list, but it does contain the things I find most important.
The Cost (for in-state students)
Putting this first may come across as tasteless and more than a little mercenary, but it’s not like Binghamton hides this fact. On the east wall of the Union, across from the Admissions Center such that any teen on a tour can read it (assuming the kids can still read and aren’t on their damn TikToks), a banner reads “RIGHT PRICE. PRICELESS RESULTS.” To this, a trust-fund Yalie may glance up from his daily mountain of cocaine and scoff at the “Walmart-like” nature of such an advertisement. Such a Yalie can get skull-and-bones’ed.
There are some few people with the funds or ability to attend any university without any financial strain. Chances are, you are not that person. Even I—a guy who grew up in an embarrassingly affluent Westchester suburb during the biggest bull run in the history of the stock market—am not that person. So long as college remains in such high demand, coupled with such great expectations of careers and transferable skills, the vast majority of us will have to appreciate “bang for buck” when we can get it.
And for in-state students, that’s exactly what we receive. Of course, there’s the obvious matter of tuition being only $7,070 for undergraduates, and $11,310 for graduate students. Even for out-of-state and international students, their tuition rates of $26,950 and $24,500 are still just over half of the average private university tuition—an extortionate $42,162. When you look at these figures and consider the recent strides Binghamton has made in research and overall prestige (which will be covered later in this article), “Right Price” starts to seem less like a marketing gimmick and more of an accurate descriptor.
There are less obvious “discounts” to attending this university compared to others. If you’re an in-state student (or a nearby Pennsylvania resident), the ability to drive back to your hometown in under 10 hours saves so much not only in terms of money, but time and stress as well. Meanwhile, as you’re living here, you might notice that off-campus rent and dining is a lot cheaper than, say, New York City. I notice this more as a graduate student, as all of my friends who left academia are now paying more rent than I am for less space and privacy.
The Nature
This remains one of the biggest selling points for Binghamton, and of upstate New York more broadly. Every tour guide, orientation, recruitment seminar etc. mentions the nature preserve and nearby parks, all for good reason. On those uncommon days where the weather is dry and not brutally hot, there’s no other words besides beautiful to describe it. Fall is especially good here, as not only are the cool, dry days most common in this season, but the turning of the leaves across the region is a sight enough to attract numerous tourists.
Now, it’s true that the days of beautiful weather are pretty rare. Rain, snow, and mud are standby small-talk complaints, especially in the “spring.” In my view, however—and this is the most gratifying way to look at it—the rarity of these days makes them all the more valuable. They always happen to come at just the right time for a morale boost (i.e. all the time in life). So learning to appreciate and take advantage of them will make this life all the better.
The Resources and Opportunities
Despite this being one of the most substantial reasons to appreciate Binghamton, I can only write a short summary. Otherwise, this would be a seven-page article listing all of the opportunities I’ve seen. The trouble is that these opportunities are rarely sign-posted—one needs to be in the right place at the right time, know the right people, and be trusted enough to take on these opportunities well.
This is all very generic and not at all helpful, so let me use myself as an example. I signed up for many things in undergrad—arguably too many. Most things naturally dwindled, like my involvement in Model UN or the Board Games Group, whereas a few things started to compound into greater and greater opportunities. Sure, it involved more work, but it was exciting and fulfilling in the moment. Now, you don’t need to end up double-majoring, adding a minor because it seems easy, serving on several non-trivial E-boards and committees, being a TA for a class, and doing undergrad research all at the same time. Doing that led me to be too absorbed in college work and Binghamton life to actually figure out what I wanted to do with the things I was given. Only too late, for instance, did I start taking advantage of career resources like the Fleishman Center or Harpur Edge, or simply conducting informational interviews with people whose careers I found interesting on the internet. (You can do that, by the way. Most people with interesting jobs love to talk about themselves and their work, especially if they feel like they’re mentoring the younger generation.) Of the resources and opportunities I listed, these are the most accessible to everyone here.
To reiterate: good things compound on themselves in college. Clubs, for instance, are much more connected to jobs, careers, and broader organizations than they were in high school (for well-managed ones, at least). Involvement in said clubs, and cross-pollinating your work in one club or class with another, will be much more fruitful than just “getting good grades” and nothing else. And like compound interest, the more time you set for these things, and the more effort you put in at the beginning, the greater the payoff will be at the end. You need to be strategic, however, with what you want that payoff to be. Don’t be afraid to combine disparate interests. The beauty of Binghamton is that it is large enough to offer overwhelming opportunities to those fortunate enough to find them, but small enough also that everyone can, in principle, distinguish themselves from somebody else.
The “Softened Radicalism”
Of the things I listed, this is probably the least generic and most bizarre virtue. When I say “radicalism,” I mean it in a broad ideological sense. For the past four years I’ve been covering political events at Binghamton University and the surrounding community from my own center-right perspective. There’s no mistaking that this is a quite left-wing institution. College Democrats meetings can fill lecture halls; College Republicans meetings can’t fill the thimble piece in Monopoly. Binghamton Review used to be almost exclusively conservative, with the occasional libertarian popping up. Now it’s a “free speech magazine” with a rough left-right balance. This is not to mention the incidents of professors like Ana Maria Candela and Dara Silberstein having their classes engage in “progressive stacking” and pro-choice activism in their classes, with most students either in agreement, apathy, or too timid to openly object (for fear of retaliation, perception of being “that guy,” or otherwise being exposed in a crowd). As my previous writing has made clear, I think that the political culture on campus is stifling and unhealthy, and I will not consider it a thing to appreciate in itself (unless of course you’re of the political persuasion that luxuriates in being the uncontested viewpoint).
But there I go complaining again. Truth is, I don’t have a “positive” thing to say about it, but there is one thing to appreciate. To the right-wing student reading this: it’s worse almost everywhere else. (Well, I can’t say “everywhere.” I’m sure there are obscure colleges somewhere without any noticeable politics, or whose right-wing slant is as palpable as our own on the left. However, this is the biggest university I know of where decent checks-and-balances exist or are being formed against the overbearing left-culture.)
Take the issue of Israel and Palestine, for instance. For the past year, I’ve been covering the issue (from my admittedly biased perspective) as it unfolded on campus, from last October’s “rally against terror” to the late Spring’s encampment. While I found that both sides had said and done stupid things in their activism, I still found the left’s to be more harmful or obnoxious. Still, in all my coverage, I found there wasn’t anything close to the violence at the UCLA encampments, where a pro-Israel counterprotestor was reportedly shoved to the ground and concussed and a different counterprotestor threw a firecracker into a makeshift tent. Several other universities canceled classes and graduation due to the chaos. Yes, Binghamton can be annoying in its politics, but we’re not this bad. We haven’t been anywhere near it since the Art Laffer debacle in 2019. (And even that didn’t see any injuries.)
Finally, there are new initiatives that aim to make Binghamton’s campus healthier and freer for political expression. Trevor Fornara and I have been working on the Student Summit on Political Engagement, in which the major political organizations on campus sit down and organize events and statements such as the Great Debate series that takes place every fall. We hope to show that one can publicly express their political views without a lightning bolt coming from on high and destroying them.
Conclusion
Gratitude is the virtue that saves sanity, more than anything else. Actively practicing it, even when things are grim, will leave you so much better than ruminating in that whirlpool of misery that I so warned against. I listed just a few things for which I’m grateful, and I hope that you can do the same—whether in Binghamton or anywhere else in life.