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Let me tell you about Stony
Brook, that fine example of
State sponsored education two That is, SUNY
hours away from New York City, at Stony Brook.
out in the suburban blandness
of Long Island...
Despite having some excellent
academic departments, the
primary theme of Stony Brook
always seems to be "screwed
up". The unofficial school
slogan was "Stony Brook
Sucks." Some people had
T-shirts made up with this on
it...
Tis a huge place, with an enormous
amount of land donated by Ward
Melville. In the late 60s, Nelson
Rockefeller, then governor of New
York, pointed his finger at it,
and a furious explosion of
construction took place, none
of which they could get right.
They were constructing a long
bridge connecting the second
floor of the new Student Union
with the newly expanded library,
but when the bridge reached
the library they realized that
there was nothing to connect
it to. Apparently they
flipped the library plans over
and put the entrance on the
wrong side. So they walled off
the end of the bridge and it
became "The Bridge To
Nowhere", the perfect symbol
of the university. Many people
were annoyed when they
eventually put a left turn on
the end of it and connected it
up with something else.
They were pouring the
foundations for this new
student union building on the
same day that they were
pouring the concrete for the
walls of the lecture center,
and they apparently got the
loads of concrete
switched... Hence the student
union foundations had some
cracking problems and the
lecture center turned out a
very ugly drab gray color.
I often wondered what it was
supposed to look like...
The lecture center itself was
a very odd building in any
case. A big lump of
windowless modernistic
concrete, often compared to a
bomb shelter. Some people
seemed very proud of the way
it completely avoided the use
of right angles in it's
structure. Going up the
staircases was an interesting
vertigo inducing experience:
your inner ear tells you
you're standing straight up, but
the slope of the walls tell
you you're leaning over
fifteen degrees...
Another classic Stony Brook
story: when they built the
South Campus Complex, some
bright person did an analysis
that proved that installing
light switches was a waste of
money. Their cost just wasn't
worth the little bit of power
saved by turning off
florescent lights. But then
the seventies rolled around,
power prices went up, and you
could drive by South Campus at
3 AM, and see the lights blaze
away in the midst of the
"Energy Crisis".
Then, there's the Health Science
Center, a truly gigantic
structure, a huge cube formed by
a cluster of smaller cubes, all
elevated on stilts, visible from
miles around. It was not
appreciated by the Long Island
suburbanites at all. Among my
circle of friends it was often
compared to Chronos, a big alien
robot from some old science
fiction movie, and it does
indeed have the imposing
presence of a Godzilla-class
monster... As you walk up to it,
there's something deceptive
about it's size, you keep
thinking you're almost there,
but actually it's still bigger
and further away than you
thought... finally you approach
the entrance, and the tremendous
cube is looming over you, and
you look at the structure's great
legs... and you realize they're
_rusting_:
Is this thing safe?
Couldn't they afford to paint those legs?
It turns out that the
architects _wanted_ them to
look that way. They put a
cladding on the pillars that
was intended to rust, which is
sometimes used to give things
a kind of soft, natural
appearence.
(On a high-tech science
fictional concrete cube?
Don't ask me, I'm no
architect).
One story I've heard about the
Health Science Center: they
installed a large number of
ventilating fans, mounted on
the roof, all of them wired to
start at the same time. The
combined torque of these
things accelerating was
apparently enough to make the
building creak (think about
the stability of a huge cube
up on stilts...). The
solution: they replaced half
of the motors with models that
spin in the opposite
direction, so they would
cancel the effect of the other
motors.
But my absolute favorite story
about the Health Science
Center: as originally
constructed, they forgot to
include a morgue. Cadavers
had to be refrigerated in the
cafeteria facilities...
I understand they didn't fix
this problem until they built
an adjacent hospital
complex...
But I've just been talking
about the problems with the
buildings at Stony Brook.
There's more to a university
than just buildings, right?
For example, there was the
time the adminstration decided
to make a change in the rules
concerning continuing housing
on campus. If you wanted to
stay where you were, you
needed to get a certain form
stamped... on the ONE
particular day they set aside
for this process. _Thousands_
of people mobbed the
adminstration building,
forming a line a mile long
with a completely stationary
tail, since more people were
cutting the line than standing
in it. What was this all
about? Why did anyone think
this proceedure was necessary
or desireable? Truly an
amazing place.
The year that I graduated, a
new President wanted to hold a
single, university wide
graduation ceremony, rather
than the smaller departmental
graduations they had been
doing. The only place
remotely big enough to hold an
entire graduating class at (Stony Brook for all it's
Stony Brook was the football other sins, has never been
field, which is where they a big football school, and
decided to do it having thousands of people
trampling the football field
wasn't as unthinkable as it
would be some other places).
Reporters for the school
newspaper interviewed the
adminstration, asking them
about rain-out plans. They
said "For something like this,
you just have to assume that
it isn't going to rain."
So of course, it rained.
Nearly everyone left early,
except for a small hardcore crowd
that clustered up front by the
stage, heckling the speakers,
and chanting in unison
"Stony Brook Sucks!
Stony Brook Sucks!"
A shame I missed that ceremony.
A more fitting expression of the I'm not very big on graduation
Stony Brook spirit, I can't ceremonies. Skipped it for
imagine. both college and grad school.
Ditto high school.
(I fell asleep that
afternoon, and hence
wasn't there to
pick up the award
they tried to give me.)
But there's definitely an upside to all this:
There are virtues to attending a school
that takes pride in a bad attitude.
Very little football bullshit.
Very little fraternity nonsense.
Post "Animal House",
some guys wanted to
start a fraternity.
They were ignored.
And there are virtues of anonymity:
You study the stuff, take the tests,
and get your grades, with no worries that
the prof will get pissed off if you skip
classes, show up late, don't cut your hair,
etc. Some people complain about a lack
of personal contact in these places, but
when personal contact disappears you also
lose many other things:
favoritism, prejudice...
Stony Brook: the mediocre meritocracy?
I wrote an essay in the Logbook
of the Stony Brook Science
Fiction Forum that seemed
popular:
Stony Brook is the Void:
There is nothing here
but what you bring yourself.
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