So you’ve come back to Binghamton. No, it’s not the title of the latest bestseller, or even that of a bargain self-help rag at the bottom of the Wal-Mart book bin (yes, they sell books, and puppies too!). It is in fact the state which much of this student body is currently in — call it our very own human condition.

The “Premier Public Institution in the Northeast,” or whatever it is we like to call ourselves these days, boasts an illustrious retention rate. That means that 92 percent of you spent at least a year here, said “Yes, Binghamton is a relatively decent establishment. I respect what they’re doing here, and I think I shall continue my education in their hallowed, yet value-priced, halls.”

Now that’s saying something.

More likely, however, your parents promised you a car if you promised not to make them drop 50 large on tuition. As for myself, I continually forget stuff in my room when I go home for the summer, thus having no choice but to return, year after glorious year, to this pastoral milieu of lauded academia and priced-to-cost hamburgers.

Now, don’t mistake my righteous indignation for … well … righteous indignation. I really do like it here. In two years Binghamton has restrained itself from slighting me too badly. Well, as long as you don’t count the time I had to walk back to campus from Johnson City … on the highway … at three in the morning because every cabbie in upstate New York was swarming State Street and I made the mistake of not drinking myself ragged on a Wednesday night.

Go figure.

Now, while that’s hardly the University’s fault, lack of working showers for two weeks in my suite my second semester might be. But I don’t blame them for that. I mean, they can’t be responsible for plumbing AND the electricity.

So besides those unfortunate miscues, and that time Res Life tried to have me assassinated, Binghamton has done me relatively right. Honestly, I totally dropped that grudge I had against Sodexho for taking my family hostage that month I tried to refuse to sign up for a meal plan.

I’m confident I’m not alone in my declaration. I know there are others among you who find yourselves back at this cozy little gulag of ours, sitting in oddly proportioned cubes BU told your parents were “dormitories.” I know, too, that at some point in the whirlwind which was the past week, you asked yourself: “How did I get back here?”

But that is nothing to be ashamed of, my weak-willed compatriots. Surely it can be said that it’s our preeminent detachment from our own circumstance — our world-renowned apathy — which is at least somewhat responsible for the misadventures that become us.

Regardless, it falls upon the University, to look after us, if only to a degree. Now I’m not asking for an ass-wiping service to come to my house once a week, as awesome as that would be. But in the end we the students are paying customers, and the customer is always right.

Over the years we, the huddled masses of teeming youth, have dealt with less-than inspired administrative decisions. We’ve swallowed endless and asinine e-mails, increasingly recondite construction completion dates and dubious appropriation of shadow funds (read: gigantic new flat screen television placed in the library lobby so that student enjoyment is rendered impossible. What is that?).

We have returned to you BU, yes. Reluctantly we have again placed our trust, our still-forming minds and our golden youth within your charge.

So try not to eff this year up too badly, all right?