Meeting the POBUS

John Minami

Tuesday night I was cordially invited to attend a dinner meeting with the POBUS (President Of Binghamton University SUNY).  It was just one of a series of dinner meetings that the POBUS was having with various students ranging from freshmen in Dickinson to seniors living off campus.  And overall, I enjoyed the evening pretty well.

I had expected to dine with him alone, but instead there were about eight students and two faculty members present at the dinner.  We pushed together a few tables in C4 and sat in a misshapen circle talking about how our lives were.  The students shared their majors and campus activities while the POBUS gave us some insight into the inner workings of a university president.  The revelation of the night: Harvey Stenger (a.k.a. the POBUS) is a person. 

All year I was plagued with news of a “new president” who would be presiding over Binghamton University.  However, in all honesty, I didn’t really care.  I had never met the man and I had absolutely no choice or say in whatever decisions he made regarding the campus.  I had not consented for this person to decide how my college life would go.  For all I knew, he could’ve disbanded the Crew team (a huge part of my college life) and hiked tuition up a thousand dollars.  He was a far-off giant who apparently had a significant amount of control over my life and I didn’t know how he would use that control over me.  When I had invited to the dinner, I didn’t expect much out of it.  My mindset walking into the dining hall was: “He’s just doing this as a formality to make it seem like he cares about the students.  In the end, he’s going to have the school and his own best interest in mind.”  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

What I learned about the POBUS through our dining experience was that he used to be a chemistry teacher at the University of Buffalo who also taught a computer science class.  He’s a loving husband who is taking his wife out to a play this weekend.  He recently defused his first student protest (the grad students wanted more money for Teacher Assistantships).  He is a great father who has a daughter in college.  He’s working with various local and state groups/organizations to control our exploding deer population.  Most of all, he cares about the students.  I had expected him to treat this dinner with little interest or care but I could see that as our dinner conversations progressed he genuinely cared about the Binghamton students.  I was amazed at how much interest he took in what we had to say to him and the way he shared so much of what was going on in his life with us, a group of younger (but not that much younger) adults. 

Sitting next to him in C4, I didn’t feel like I was talking with the POBUS.  It felt more like talking to an old acquaintance who I was catching up with.  It felt very relaxed and casual and I loved every moment of it.  We got to know each other as actual human beings and as more than just faculty and student.  I am not sure if the POBUS is holding any more of these dinners but if anyone has the opportunity to attend them, I would definitely do so.

To President Stenger: Good luck with running the university because your job and my future depend on it.  But I’m not worried because I am sure we will both be fine in your very capable hands.