Stabbing at SUNY Broome Dorms

[McBob]

BREAKING: Possible stabbing at SUNY Broome

18-year-old man cut on his chest, reports indicate he was possibly stabbed at the dorms on campus. Law enforcement and an ambulance are on the scene. We'll bring you more when we know. - WBNG

[McBob]

Coming from some good sources. The drugs (of all kinds) are absolutely out of control. There's been sexual assaults, rapes and regular assaults. SUNY Broome actively recruited in New York City (free room and board)... and look what they get... complete trash. Just like a majority of NYC, a complete melting pot of crap.

[Bingoloid]

Just like a majority of NYC, a complete melting pot of crap.

NYC is and has long been safer and wealthier than Binghamton. Like it or not, this area is also mostly crap, and some of those kids are actually trying to better their lives.

 

With that said, open enrollment isn't the right policy for the dorms and if you're concentrating some of the worst Bronx trash in the same building, bad things are going to happen. I know some professors aren't comfortable with the students they're dealing with, who are semi-literate and get angry when they fail.

 

SUNY Broome is a high-performing community college as community colleges go. If they're going to troll outside of the community for students, they need to set some minimal admissions standards that will screen out the debris, regardless of where they're from. Unfair to the students who are trying, unfair to the students who are encouraged to take out loans to sign up for something they're totally unequipped for.

[Dino]

Both of my kids graduated last Spring from SUNY Broome, and were glad to be moving on. Both complained about the class (or lack of) of students that arrived on campus once the dorms opened. The nonsense started immediately, and has been kept very quiet (mostly), out of the public's earshot. I said from the beginning this would turn out to be a negative. Adding the dorms wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but the recruiting efforts to bring these kids in from NYC, will turn out to be a disaster. Having been involved with the school, primarily on employer training consortia, and meeting Dr. Drumm, it seems that his ambitions and intent are in the right place to make the school a great learning institution. They need to re-evaluate the recruiting program - they are looking in the wrong places.

 

And, these issues aren't unique to SUNY Broome. My daughter goes to SUNY Delhi, and that school has a lot of downstate kids as well. Similar crap goes on there, as well. I saw it while attending campus visits, parent weekend, weekend visits. You can pick out the troublemakers just by observing. She lives in a co-ed dorm, the Freshman boys (from NYC) in the room next to her are big trouble. Technically they should have been kicked out of school already for all the BS they've pulled, but they are still there. Our youth in general are a troubled bunch....it is really a sad thing to see.

[thomas]

If you are going to recruit illiterate thugs what do you expect?

[27 Time World Champions]

SUNY Broome is a great school for the 30% of students who actually care and want to learn or move on to a 4-year school. The problem has always been the 70% who can't hack it and drop out or get thrown out

[BinghamtonBill]

Funny, when BCVoice first began hearing stories of DRUG USE and SEXUAL ASSAULTS in the SUNY BROOME dorms, we FOILed for POLICE REPORTS and 911 CALLS last January. Our FOILS were DENIED! The SUNY BROOME Administration are WELL AWARE of what is going on in those dorms but they work to COVER UP the illegal activity. Kevin Drumm should be FIRED!

[The Wanker]

I took some classes there in the late 90's. It was mostly local kids a few older students like me.

 

The kids right out of high school were SCARY illiterate. We did some "everybody read two paragraphs out loud" in class (yeah....just like we did in fourth grade when we were learning to read) and no one but me could pronounce a word that ws comprised of more than 5 letters.

 

Scary. Even the teacher grimaced when she listened to her students mangle what used to be ninth grade English.

I couldn't figure out how these kids made it out of high school much less how they got into junior college.

 

Now, 20 years later, I was at the Doctors this week staring into the face of a newly hired young nurse. I was asking her simple questions about my condition and having to feed her medical terminology because she was struggling to get the words out on her own. Really complex terms like "infection".

 

The equally young MD totally missed a simple sinus infection. He was going to do nothing. I insisted on an antibiotic and he called in the wrong one. Two weeks later and I'm still battling that AND bronchitis.

 

I don't know what these doctors and nurses are but some of them AIN'T doctors and nurses.

 

I feel fortunate that I obtained some anatomy and medical education 5 years ago. At least I have a fighting chance to be proactive about getting correct diagnoses and treatment for myself.

[The Wanker]

Funny, when BCVoice first began hearing stories of DRUG USE and SEXUAL ASSAULTS in the SUNY BROOME dorms, we FOILed for POLICE REPORTS and 911 CALLS last January. Our FOILS were DENIED! The SUNY BROOME Administration are WELL AWARE of what is going on in those dorms but they work to COVER UP the illegal activity. Kevin Drumm should be FIRED!

My Mom lived a block over from the school when the dorms were being proposed. She went all Old Lady Activist, fighting the idea all the way.

It seems her trepidations were prophetic.

[coldcomfort]

Funny, when BCVoice first began hearing stories of DRUG USE and SEXUAL ASSAULTS in the SUNY BROOME dorms, we FOILed for POLICE REPORTS and 911 CALLS last January. Our FOILS were DENIED! The SUNY BROOME Administration are WELL AWARE of what is going on in those dorms but they work to COVER UP the illegal activity. Kevin Drumm should be FIRED!

 

 

SUNY Broome is an embarressment to the SUNY system due to the "drug dorm".

[a taxpayer]

what about shot(s) fired that occurred in the BCC Student Housing several (or more)weeks ago...??? Anybody hear about?? Anybody see it in the media??? Anybody?? Bueller??

 

YES a shooting DID actually occurred... seems a NYC/downstate person was visiting a couple friends who were students and when he was showing them his gun it accidentally went off (maybe more then one round). I believe the round(s) went through the floor and into an unoccupied room below.

 

The two students were suspended/expelled and the gun toting A-hole was arrested... I and VERY confidant the school and town officials are purposefully keeping this quiet.

[a taxpayer]

Funny, when BCVoice first began hearing stories of DRUG USE and SEXUAL ASSAULTS in the SUNY BROOME dorms, we FOILed for POLICE REPORTS and 911 CALLS last January. Our FOILS were DENIED! The SUNY BROOME Administration are WELL AWARE of what is going on in those dorms but they work to COVER UP the illegal activity. Kevin Drumm should be FIRED!

 

are you surprised???.... almost like the Binghamton PD refusing to release crime stats or sugar coating them ...

[Bingoloid]

For what it's worth, I'm told that the victim is doing fine and his injuries were not critical. Still a disturbing incident, hoping to hear more tonight.

[PeteMoss]

As I wrote once before, Drumm was TOLD how bad it would be. O'Connor begged him not to have the dorms built.

Drumm did not listen. Now the students and this area are paying the price.

 

But the real problem is with the trustees. They never should have approved the dorms.

[mikeyme56]

just kids being kids

[Bingoloid]

As I wrote once before, Drumm was TOLD how bad it would be. O'Connor begged him not to have the dorms built.

Drumm did not listen. Now the students and this area are paying the price.

 

But the real problem is with the trustees. They never should have approved the dorms.

 

I can think of a number of legitimate reasons for a community college to have dorms, provided the leadership and resources are in place to manage them properly.

 

With that said, I don't know the ins and outs of what motivates students to come stay in the dorms here, but I've heard many times about Binghamton University faculty complaining about the quality of some of the local students who slide in under the agreements with SUNY Broome. I can only imagine what some of the students who couldn't see themselves hacking it at their own local community college and need to enroll in one several hours away can be like.

 

[27 Time World Champions]

The original and the best! Han shot first!!

[Binghamton Native]

Don't forget the sexual assault last October: http://www.binghamtonhomepage.com/news/local-news/man-accused-of-sexual-assault-in-suny-broome-dorm

 

This is the same school that every year celebrates the life of the Criminal Justice Department Chairman who overdosed on heroin.

[Michael Scarn]

[Jack McGurn]

On another thread a few weeks ago someone posted a copy of the 2015 police responses to the new Student Village dorm and Student Center which houses the gym & cafeteria. Absolutely shameful. But typical in today's weak and passive administration style that academia seems to attract......and is now paying for. The out of touch SUNY Broome Board of Trustees is another matter unto itself.

 

Anything in the news about a recent discharge of a weapon through the floor in one of the dorm rooms and the dismissal of a downstate student????? Sources say that it's a fact Jack........as well as another incident involving the firing of a pellet gun out of one of the dorm windows. My guess is that it's been swept well under the media rug......but should be reflected in the ever growing police incident report.

 

Appears as though our SUNY-Broome downstate recruits don't give a flying hoot as to their "safe place".....and certainly that of others.

[GTO]

Although the dorms have seemed to turn into a bit of a debacle, I think the reasoning behind them is solid. I do suspect (I certainly am just an outsider looking in) that the reason to create the dorms was to increase the population of students. Traditionally, Broome Tech, BCC and now SUNY Broome has (as a community college typically is) been a local college. Our community is shrinking, commerce is down, taxes are up and there is a mass exodus of the citizenry - in particular the young who become educated and leave for Raleigh, Orlando, Vegas, etc etc etc, and who can blame them. The dorms were a plan to increase the enrollment of the college and likely bring in some more young people who were more apt to enter the work force than those who go BU and get the heck out. Criminal justice, business management, nursing, dental hygiene, paramedic - these are job making majors that kids can leave BCC and enter the (hopefully local) workforce a very short time after graduating from a two year program. If the dorms had worked as they were supposed to, we would have seen influx of some young minds with kids entering the local workforce, all while sustaining the student population numbers at Broome which will undoubtedly decline as the local population declines. Basically... the dorms were a plan to help the school help the community. That's my take. It did not turn out great yet but I am not ready to write them off completely (yet). The school needs to recruit elsewhere (rural upstate NY vs urban downstate) and hope for an influx of "working class" type kids. Basically, this is yet another area where the NYS taxes have killed local business/economy. Now here is yet another way that upstate is getting screwed over by NYC. Yeah, it may be a stretch to relate the two but if you think it through, it makes sense.

[Bingoloid]

Although the dorms have seemed to turn into a bit of a debacle, I think the reasoning behind them is solid. I do suspect (I certainly am just an outsider looking in) that the reason to create the dorms was to increase the population of students. Traditionally, Broome Tech, BCC and now SUNY Broome has (as a community college typically is) been a local college. Our community is shrinking, commerce is down, taxes are up and there is a mass exodus of the citizenry - in particular the young who become educated and leave for Raleigh, Orlando, Vegas, etc etc etc, and who can blame them. The dorms were a plan to increase the enrollment of the college and likely bring in some more young people who were more apt to enter the work force than those who go BU and get the heck out. Criminal justice, business management, nursing, dental hygiene, paramedic - these are job making majors that kids can leave BCC and enter the (hopefully local) workforce a very short time after graduating from a two year program.

 

One under-appreciated factor in this area is just how difficult it is for many of the local kids who get steered into a community college. Not everyone in SUNY Broome's service area lives in the Triple Cities with walkable bus access to the campus.

 

There are still many families that do not grow up with regular internet access at home, can barely keep cars on the road, and, in the more outlying areas of the county, may not be able to travel safely due to our winter weather that usually persists well into the spring semester. Throw in trying to hold down a low-income job, and being a commuter student becomes a pretty serious burden that may make an education very difficult to access at all. Few of these students have the financial means to support an apartment of their own.

 

For those local students, the use of a dorm is a huge asset. You're close to your classes, close to where the jobs are anyway, saving commute time, saving gas money, hopefully able to network with other students, etc.

 

With that in mind, the college is Open Enrollment and offers some degree of preferential access to Binghamton University. As long as that is true, it sounds like it's going to be a funnel for students who should know full well they aren't going to be able to transfer from their own community college. The college needs to figure out how to manage this.

 

Beyond that, on a couple of other points that have been raised in this thread:

 

- Yes, a professor died of a drug overdose a few years ago. Many of his colleagues, as well as students, were shocked. Mourning is done for the sake of the living, he was a member of the school's community, and drug addiction is a plague in this area. It's a difficult situation, but to suggest that he should be purged from the school's collective memory because he failed to die in an approved manner strikes me as awfully low and classless. If anything, it should be emphasized as an opportunity to talk about the fact that addicts in our area are not just homeless panhandlers and petty criminals, but are increasingly neighbors, relatives, and coworkers who seem otherwise functional. People who think that will never happen in their neighborhood, their family, their workplace because "we're not like that" are naive. People have problems. (There was recently a story in the news about a clean-cut middle-class husband and wife who disappeared in the desert southwest and were found buried in someone's yard. The resident finally admitted that he was their meth dealer and they'd all been "partying" together all night. The couple's family went very public with press releases about how that was lies, they weren't like that, etc... Then the toxicology came back.)

 

- None of us have the statistics. In part, this is because SUNY Broome fails to provide them, and that's a fair point of criticism. However, it is true that if you take a given number of people, some of them will have addiction problems, some of them will develop mental health issues, and some will commit crimes. (There was recently a stabbing-suicide in an apartment housing Yale students.) Unfortunately, this is especially true of people at that age, and especially true of lower-income people. It would be interesting to see the actual data so that there are some answers about whether or not this problem is any worse than the problems in the community as a whole (which are pretty bad) and if it really is true that crime is concentrated among students from particular areas or if it's just a byproduct of clueless teenagers being poorly supervised across the board. Anybody who thinks local kids don't come from dirtbag parents, steal, get into fights, or do drugs doesn't get out much.

 

I've heard differing things about changes in security practices, etc., over time, at the dorms. I have no idea if those things are true. People need to take a mature, fact-based approach to the situation, determine exactly how bad it actually is, and do what needs to be done to address it.

[mikeyme56]

give them enough time, they will all kill each other ..........problem solved.

[GTO]

 

One under-appreciated factor in this area is just how difficult it is for many of the local kids who get steered into a community college. Not everyone in SUNY Broome's service area lives in the Triple Cities with walkable bus access to the campus.

 

There are still many families that do not grow up with regular internet access at home, can barely keep cars on the road, and, in the more outlying areas of the county, may not be able to travel safely due to our winter weather that usually persists well into the spring semester. Throw in trying to hold down a low-income job, and being a commuter student becomes a pretty serious burden that may make an education very difficult to access at all. Few of these students have the financial means to support an apartment of their own.

 

For those local students, the use of a dorm is a huge asset. You're close to your classes, close to where the jobs are anyway, saving commute time, saving gas money, hopefully able to network with other students, etc.

 

With that in mind, the college is Open Enrollment and offers some degree of preferential access to Binghamton University. As long as that is true, it sounds like it's going to be a funnel for students who should know full well they aren't going to be able to transfer from their own community college. The college needs to figure out how to manage this.

 

Beyond that, on a couple of other points that have been raised in this thread:

 

- Yes, a professor died of a drug overdose a few years ago. Many of his colleagues, as well as students, were shocked. Mourning is done for the sake of the living, he was a member of the school's community, and drug addiction is a plague in this area. It's a difficult situation, but to suggest that he should be purged from the school's collective memory because he failed to die in an approved manner strikes me as awfully low and classless. If anything, it should be emphasized as an opportunity to talk about the fact that addicts in our area are not just homeless panhandlers and petty criminals, but are increasingly neighbors, relatives, and coworkers who seem otherwise functional. People who think that will never happen in their neighborhood, their family, their workplace because "we're not like that" are naive. People have problems. (There was recently a story in the news about a clean-cut middle-class husband and wife who disappeared in the desert southwest and were found buried in someone's yard. The resident finally admitted that he was their meth dealer and they'd all been "partying" together all night. The couple's family went very public with press releases about how that was lies, they weren't like that, etc... Then the toxicology came back.)

 

- None of us have the statistics. In part, this is because SUNY Broome fails to provide them, and that's a fair point of criticism. However, it is true that if you take a given number of people, some of them will have addiction problems, some of them will develop mental health issues, and some will commit crimes. (There was recently a stabbing-suicide in an apartment housing Yale students.) Unfortunately, this is especially true of people at that age, and especially true of lower-income people. It would be interesting to see the actual data so that there are some answers about whether or not this problem is any worse than the problems in the community as a whole (which are pretty bad) and if it really is true that crime is concentrated among students from particular areas or if it's just a byproduct of clueless teenagers being poorly supervised across the board. Anybody who thinks local kids don't come from dirtbag parents, steal, get into fights, or do drugs doesn't get out much.

 

I've heard differing things about changes in security practices, etc., over time, at the dorms. I have no idea if those things are true. People need to take a mature, fact-based approach to the situation, determine exactly how bad it actually is, and do what needs to be done to address it.

I agree whole heartedly... my thought of "The school needs to recruit elsewhere (rural upstate NY vs urban downstate) and hope for an influx of "working class" type kids." fits that bill and hopefully allows some (pseudo) local kids a shot of the American Dream of "doing better than your parents did". Despite all of the doom and gloom, that is still what it should all be about.

[Nyrfan]

 

One under-appreciated factor in this area is just how difficult it is for many of the local kids who get steered into a community college. Not everyone in SUNY Broome's service area lives in the Triple Cities with walkable bus access to the campus.

 

There are still many families that do not grow up with regular internet access at home, can barely keep cars on the road, and, in the more outlying areas of the county, may not be able to travel safely due to our winter weather that usually persists well into the spring semester. Throw in trying to hold down a low-income job, and being a commuter student becomes a pretty serious burden that may make an education very difficult to access at all. Few of these students have the financial means to support an apartment of their own.

 

For those local students, the use of a dorm is a huge asset. You're close to your classes, close to where the jobs are anyway, saving commute time, saving gas money, hopefully able to network with other students, etc.

 

With that in mind, the college is Open Enrollment and offers some degree of preferential access to Binghamton University. As long as that is true, it sounds like it's going to be a funnel for students who should know full well they aren't going to be able to transfer from their own community college. The college needs to figure out how to manage this.

 

Beyond that, on a couple of other points that have been raised in this thread:

 

- Yes, a professor died of a drug overdose a few years ago. Many of his colleagues, as well as students, were shocked. Mourning is done for the sake of the living, he was a member of the school's community, and drug addiction is a plague in this area. It's a difficult situation, but to suggest that he should be purged from the school's collective memory because he failed to die in an approved manner strikes me as awfully low and classless. If anything, it should be emphasized as an opportunity to talk about the fact that addicts in our area are not just homeless panhandlers and petty criminals, but are increasingly neighbors, relatives, and coworkers who seem otherwise functional. People who think that will never happen in their neighborhood, their family, their workplace because "we're not like that" are naive. People have problems. (There was recently a story in the news about a clean-cut middle-class husband and wife who disappeared in the desert southwest and were found buried in someone's yard. The resident finally admitted that he was their meth dealer and they'd all been "partying" together all night. The couple's family went very public with press releases about how that was lies, they weren't like that, etc... Then the toxicology came back.)

 

- None of us have the statistics. In part, this is because SUNY Broome fails to provide them, and that's a fair point of criticism. However, it is true that if you take a given number of people, some of them will have addiction problems, some of them will develop mental health issues, and some will commit crimes. (There was recently a stabbing-suicide in an apartment housing Yale students.) Unfortunately, this is especially true of people at that age, and especially true of lower-income people. It would be interesting to see the actual data so that there are some answers about whether or not this problem is any worse than the problems in the community as a whole (which are pretty bad) and if it really is true that crime is concentrated among students from particular areas or if it's just a byproduct of clueless teenagers being poorly supervised across the board. Anybody who thinks local kids don't come from dirtbag parents, steal, get into fights, or do drugs doesn't get out much.

 

I've heard differing things about changes in security practices, etc., over time, at the dorms. I have no idea if those things are true. People need to take a mature, fact-based approach to the situation, determine exactly how bad it actually is, and do what needs to be done to address it.

Unfortunately many of the comments people make here are based on opinion, hearsay or innuendo and are not fact based. I think credibility grows when comments/actions are based on facts. But then where would people be able to vent? But what do I know?