Stony Brook Southampton Offers Something Different
By Rachel O'Brien Stony Brook Southampton is an anomaly among universities with its student body of about 200 undergraduate and graduate students. This east end campus of Stony Brook University offers a unique college experience for those who would rather know the names of all the students in their program than have a plethora of weekly events to choose from. “The students like the idea of being a trailblazing class,” said Kat Storemski, a student at Southampton and governor of the student government there. “There’s a different vibe out east; everyone walks to a different beat.” With plans to make the campus a center for marine sciences and environmental studies, Stony Brook acquired the Southampton campus two years ago from the bankrupt Long Island University. “We have a different vision than the main campus; our goals are different,” Storemski said. “The vision for 20-something thousand isn’t going to be the same as for 150.” A visitor to the Southampton campus easily recognizes the differences between the Southampton campus and the main campus. The lack of campus activity at Southampton echoes with emptiness compared to the buzzing liveliness of the Stony Brook campus. On a Tuesday afternoon, the dining hall in the Student Activities Center on the main campus is packed with students waiting in line for food and tables. At the same time of day, the Student Center in Southampton, which houses the only working dining hall, is completely void of people. Responding to a recent Facebook poll question asking whether there was a lack of extracurricular activities on campus, Joshua Cronopulos, a freshman, said, “On weekends yes. We just got our rec. room last week, so now there’s some crap to do when we’re bored. Before that we would make something up to do on our own or just sit around the dorms.” Only two of the dozen or so dorms on campus are open and being used; one for men and one for women. Students said there are nine or ten students in each suite, depending on whether the largest room in the suite is tripled. Liam Keating, a sophomore in environmental studies with a concentration in public policy and philosophy, said he won’t start on the concentration until his junior year because those courses aren’t offered at the Southampton campus yet. “I come here, I pay less because it’s a SUNY school but I feel that it’s really quiet and it’s not well organized,” Keating, a transfer from the University of Mary Washington, said. “Maybe it should have been closed for one more year to get everything started because between registration and how well this campus could be used, it’s got amazing capabilities and it’s still falling far from where it should be about now.” According to Keating, there are three main buildings open. The Student Center houses the dining hall, bookstore, weight room and a lounge. Chancellor’s Hall is one of the main science buildings, which also houses English and math courses. The Fine Arts building has a theater in it and holds history and philosophy classes. “There’s not many students,” Keating said. “There’s some stuff but you can see that there’s more stuff at Stony Brook than there is here. They had some Halloween dances and stuff; just a couple of things.” Storemski said the campus is making strides and growing, even though they are running into some problems. “A big problem is how thinly stretched our support system is,” she said. “Anamaria goes above the call of duty,” she said, referring to the Dean of Students, Anamaria Cobo de Paci. “She has an assistant who’s only there a few days a week, that’s how thinly stretched we are.” A group of freshman and sophomore students playing pool in the lounge of the Student Center on a Tuesday evening all mentioned Anamaria’s participation in campus activities, but each had varied views of the Southampton campus in general. “Weekends we go do things,” one female student, a sophomore transfer from George Mason University, said. “Yeah, we went to the movies and Anamaria took us out to dinner,” another female student interjected. These particular students were psychology, business, political science and marine biology majors - all voiced a lack of classes in those areas. Nick, a freshman, complained of having to take a three-semester calculus course instead of a two-semester course because there’s no physics class at the Southampton campus for him to take. He said he plans on taking the physics course at the Stony Brook campus next year and may transfer to the main campus to take computer engineering classes. There have been talks of an incoming class of 500 students in the fall, to which Storemski said, “I hope we’ll have set a precedent for being a tight knit community. I know almost everybody’s name on campus. It makes things easier to advocate for peoples’ needs.” “People constantly come up to me to talk,” she said. “When I’m done with class at one, I don’t leave until 7:30 because one student after another will be coming up to talk.” “Their ideas are groundbreaking and challenging,” she said. “We’re just settling our own way. It’s going to keep changing and it’ll be good.” |
