By Matt Calamia and Liz Kaempf

The announcement of Stony Brook Southampton losing most of its funding and becoming essentially closed down last week came as a shock to everyone involved, especially students, who found out that day because Newsday broke the story before the campus had a chance to tell its student body.

Despite spending over $78 million dollars on the school in the last three years and over $3 million in LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) buildings such as a brand new sustainable library, the decision has been made to cut financing for the Southampton campus in an effort to save $6.7 million a year. “I felt like we were doing so well. That’s what really bothers me,” Charlie Conino, a sophomore and Marine Science major at SBS, said about the budget problems.

These cuts and closures mean that all but the Chancellor’s Hall will be closed, all students will lose housing at the campus, and eight of the nine majors offered will be cancelled, keeping only the Marine Science major and the Graduate Writing program.

Although some majors will be offered at Stony Brook University’s main-campus, SBS students feel slighted by the school. “I can’t even make a schedule, I don’t know what to do. This is ridiculous,” said junior Alla Villafana, who can complete her Business major at SBU, but not with a concentration in Sustainability, which was only offered at SBS.

Photo by Colleen Harrington

Other students enrolling at the main campus had to sorts through thousands of courses and took hours to register while trying to make sense of all of the changes. Sophomore and Environmental Design Policy and Planning Major Gabrielle Andersen expected to graduate a semester early until now. “They’re (West Campus) offering my major, but none of my classes. What am I gonna do? Take nine credits?”

Due to the time of the announcement that Southampton would be closed, it left students with little or no time to look for options for the upcoming fall semester. In a sense, it was SBU or bust.

“Me, as well as the majority of students and faculty here, are completely distraught that we were not told about this, not given a chance to fight it,” said Nikki Neissani, a junior majoring in Business. “It was actually done very sneakily, so we really had no choice to go anywhere else but [West Campus], since most places stopped accepting people a long time ago,” said Neissani, who has been at SBS since it opened.

SBS also has had to cease the admittance of incoming freshman to the school. “I was so crushed to hear about Stony Brook Southampton closing,” said Matt Lyons, a high school student who was entering SBS in the fall as an Environmental Studies major. “I truly have no idea what I am going to do.”

A problem facing some students is the large class sizes that Stony Brook is known for. With a smaller student body comes smaller class sizes, and vice versa. Stony Brook University is home to over 23,000 students, which equates to larger class sizes, especially in introduction and freshman classes.

Lyons said he loved the idea of the “family feeling” that SBS offered. “I have ADHD, so the small classes were definitely one of the positives at SBS,” he said. “I was able to deal with 25 kids in a class. I don’t think I will be able to focus in a 250-plus student class.”

On Monday, April 12, approximately 200 students walked over twelve miles to West Campus, opposing the decision made against their school. Students came together and participated in a sit-in protest outside of the Administration building after being warmly welcomed at noon by students of the main campus supporting their cause.

Several of the participating students wore hand-drawn t-shirts that read, “Hello, my name is #__________,” signifying the ID number of SBU students. One of those students was freshman and Marine Biology major Michael Virello. “When you come to a big campus you’re just another number, but on a smaller campus you’re a big family.” Virello participated in the walk by driving alongside the students because a knee injury kept him from completing the trek on foot.

“Kids worked so well together,” added Joshua Gelbwaks, a sophomore transfer student from ESF (SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse) and Coastal Environment Major, who may need to return to ESF because you can’t study the ocean from the Long Island Sound. “They’re there for the same reason,” finished Conino.

SBS students are being given priority benefits in multiple areas, such as housing (like the new building in Kelly Quad) and class registration. SBS students will be treated the same as returning SBU students. All freshman students who were going to SBS are guaranteed housing as long as deposits are received. Transfer students who wished to live on campus at SBS will be given campus housing on a space-available basis.

Cristina Amato, a sophomore at Stony Brook’s West Campus, doesn’t mind that SBS students are getting the same opportunity for housing as returning SBU students. “It’s the least Stony Brook can do after closing down SBS. It would have been ridiculous if they left the SBS students essentially homeless.”

“At the end of the day, 150 or so SBS students moving on campus might as well be 150 people on top of the current incoming freshman class, so I don’t think it’s much of an issue,” said Amato.

Other students on campus have not been nearly as understanding. Some feel that paying for Stony Brook is their dime and they should not have to pay for other students to get priority over the ones that were here first. Registration is hard with all the cuts the main campus has suffered without adding 500 more students to the mix.

Lyons said he understands why some at SBU may feel it is not fair, but the hand they were dealt is worse than losing dorm rooms. “I have sympathy for [SBU students]. But they need to realize that they are losing dorms, and we are losing our whole school. We are the ones getting the new dorms, but we are also losing our school that we applied to. If we wanted to go to SBU, we would have applied there.”