Liberal Unfriendly Place: Binghamton, NY

I live in San Diego, CA, which is a conservative bastion, but I've never encountered the kind of ignorant, racist and homophobic remarks that I heard in Binghamton. I guess that's why Randall Terry of Operation Rescue has decided to place his national misogyny headquarters there.

Couple Binghamton's cold conservatism with its horrible climate (we had eleven feet of snow the first winter we were there), it easily becomes the worst place I've ever lived.

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I just wanted to echo completely what I just read about Binghamton. We've got a state senator here in Binghamton who is in a cabal with Gov Pataki (read "Patako"!) to destroy higher education in New York State. His gripe with Binghamton University (one of the best public ivies in the nation): he got rejected from it some twenty years ago. It is these types of politicians who personify the Binghamton mentality. Binghamton is a prime example of the town-gown hatred. It is see acutely in elections. I am in the BU College Democrats and in last year's election the campus voted 8-1 for our Democratic County Executive. He lost. The four precincts on campus are by far the most Democratic in Broome County. They even compare to say the Upper West Side in percentage of votes that are Democratic.

The town fathers don't like this. To prevent more students from voting they separated the four precincts and placed the voting booths in unlighted, unadvertised areas. Instead of placing them in the Student Union where more people would see them, they placed them in a room off of a dining hall, where almost no one sees them. Result, in off year elections, hardly anyone on campus votes, and the Republicans who run the town get upwards of 70 or 80 percent of the vote.

Binghamton is not at all what I would call a "college town." Everything is not accessible to the students. They don't have bus service on Sundays and have very limited service on Saturdays, the days that most students get out. This is just another example of a very unliberal place.

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Just a note...Binghamton University is actually located in Vestal, New York...an entirely more liberal place. Binghamton, New York is a very traditional town, and neither municipality ends up very happy with the University, it dwells in one, but gives tax revenue to the other, and voting rights in Binghamton, etc., In addition, BU's reputation has suffered a great deal from a few students who are too liberal (there is such a thing.) as with the graduate student who complained that denying her research into local store clerk's relative politeness towards white and black customers was racism, even though her method called for no-permission videotaping of the clerks. Binghamton also doesn't see a lot of the relation-warming money that other college towns do, as much of it remains in Vestal.