[LUGSB] I may transfer next fall to SB

[Aaron Pellman-Isaacs]

To give an alternate point of view, since the replies have been so negative:


On Fri, May 13, 2011 at 11:26 AM, Hazuki Azuma <azumahazuki at gmail.com>wrote:

> Stay away from Stony Brook. Injustice happens on a grand scale here, and
> there is a lot of anti-Muslim feeling.
>
> In 2008 I was falsely accused of having made a gun threat...in 2007...right
> after there were three embarrassing gun incidents on campus. They needed a
> patsy. They chose me. HOW they mistook me for a man no one knows. Laws were
> blatantly broke in front of my face, and I was told right TO my face there
> was nothing I could do about it.
>
> I faced a kangaroo court of a "level 3 hearing" and it was only the fact
> that I brought in books of the law and read off the ones that had been
> violated that stopped them from expelling me outright. The sentence was
> reduced to "writing a 15-page paper on what a horrible woman I am and how
> I'll never ever do it again."
>

That's absolutely awful and ridiculous! I can't speak to what happened to
you, but I will say I personally have never heard anti-Muslim sentiments
expressed on campus. In a school of 25,000 plus faculty, staff, etc you are
always going to have some bigoted assholes and I *have* seen people expelled
for racial and ethnic discrimination. In general, however, I've found the
atmosphere on campus in the years now I've been around to be highly liberal
and not particularly discriminatory both among faculty and students.

Additionally I know several people who were arrested on campus for a real
gun related offense (bb guns that looked like real guns, seen and reported a
bit after halloween). They were treated respectfully by the campus police,
had fair hearings in Suffolk court, light punishment, and one of them is
actually now NYPD, so I can even say that in my experience gun threats seem
to be treated rationally on campus.

If you truly believe the hearings against you were unfair and racially
biased you should find a lawyer and deal with it properly, have you
consulted counsel of any kind? There are many groups that will do that kind
of work pro bono, hell there are groups on campus that would love to hear
about it and do something about it.


>
> The administration is corrupt as hell.


I'd argue it's no more or less corrupt than any other school, do you have
any actuary documentation?


> The school budget is in shambles


Yes, 1000 times yes, though not entirely the school's fault, Albany can go
shove their SUNY-raping budget where the sun doesn't shine!


> when i left most people were being forcibly tripled well into sophomore
> year


I know that's true freshman year, but usually not beyond the first sem,
particularly with that huge new dorm complex they opened this year and the
reopening of the Southampton dorms for this fall. I was there when they
started that policy for freshman too btw, got kicked out of my huge double
(and got priority housing which = a single for the next semester because of
it :-) ) because it got turned into a quad (the room was big enough for it,
I always wondered how we snagged it as a double to begin with).


>  and the president Shirley Strum-Kenney is an embezzling crook.
>

Strum Kenney hasn't been pres for a bit now, and I don't recall any instance
of embezzling. I didn't like how much money she allocated to the hospital or
sports compared to other things but that's a far cry from criminal behavior.

My 2C:

Stony Brook is what you make of it, like any school. It's a big school, you
won't be coddled, you won't have your hand held. If you want to do research
you need to talk to the profs yourself. If you want to get involved in stuff
on campus (I'll toss in a plug here for the Stony Brook Supercomputing team,
which I was on for 4 years, captained for 2, and is currently captained by
Jan Kasiak, who to my knowledge is still Pres of LUGSB as well) you have to
find it yourself. If you have a grade complaint you have to handle it
yourself. The school seems to be working on trying to fix that BTW, advising
has certainly gotten better recently from what I've seen.

The academics are what you'd expect from a big uni, intro and general
courses have large sections, sometimes huge. More specialized courses don't
though (my Mathematical Biology class last year had 16 people I believe for
example).

I've had a lot of fun at Stony Brook though, gotten to do some cool stuff,
gotten awesome, funded, research opportunities, had a lot of great classes,
and met a lot of cool people. YMMV of course, but I figured I'd toss in an
opposing viewpoint. Now back to studying!
--Aaron
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