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 Liberal Unfriendly Place: Elmira, NYThese are comments on Elmira, submitted by other Turn Left visitors. They do not necessarily represent the opinion of the webmaster. You may add a comment on Elmira if you want.  I spent the longest nine months of my life there. This is the only place out
of all of the places I have ever lived where being anything other than a
raging conservative was out of the question. The people of color that dare
live here are so downtrodden, due to the constant prosecution at the hands of
the police and the city fathers, that they have lost their will to fight. I
got into a fight with someone there about the AIDS crisis which made me so
confused that I didn't know whether to laugh at their ignorance or cry
because they were ignorant. I met approximately 10 other liberals other than
myself there, and they were pretty much restricted to one coffeehouse. I was
never so glad to leave a place in my life. I should have suspected something
when I couldn't find a decent radio station. Election night 1994 was a real
eye-opener. I worked at the local newspaper and was so innundated with
Conservative rhetoric, that when I went home the only thing I could bring
myself to do is watch cartoons. If you can think for yourself at all, which
is what liberalism is to me, don't go there! ...and another comment...
Elmira College was founded in 1855 as one of the first women's colleges in the country, and it was once the home of Mark Twain, whose wife attended the college. Despite its progressive early days, however, a conservative administration has dealt a great blow to this legacy. While the college invests huge sums of money into keeping up its aesthetic appearance, the lecture halls are run-down and the faculty, including profesors, are poorly paid, at least in comparison to faculty at other institutions. One of my professors, who has long been at odds with the administration, says that he has not recieved a single pay raise in years. There has long been a degree of bad blood between the conservative administration and the more liberal faculty. When the current president of the college took office several years ago, the faculty submitted to him a proposal that the college no longer take sexual orientation or marital status into consideration when hiring faculty members in the future. This proposal was rejected, with no explanation. There was another incident involving two gay students who were being subject to harrassed by other students. After counseling these two students, the campus minister (the college is non-denominational) suggested that the administration needed to take steps towards increasing awareness about such issues, as well as make it clear that harassment would not be tolarated. The next year, after summer break, he returned to the college to discover that his job was no longer waiting for him.
While Elmira College is a great institution, with ambitious
students, a dedicated faculty, and an admirable history, I'm afraid that
I cannot extent this same praise to the current administration.
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