Binghamton University is always looking for money from its alumni, and is extremely well set-up to receive the help it so desperately says it needs. Take, for example, the very first item you’ll see on the Binghamton Foundation’s Web site:

“The BU Foundation accepts gifts of cash, checks, credit cards gifts [sic], stocks and securities, electronic fund transfers, gifts of real property, in-kind gifts and planned gifts. Many of these gifts offer tax advantages to the donor.”

Interesting. So what happened when alumni — kids who graduated months ago, who still live in the area — needed help after their living space and belongings were carbonized in the nine-alarm fire at Vestal’s Riviera Ridge apartments last week?

Surely, there was a rush to reach out and give a little back to the group of people that if not now, then in a decade or two, help keep this University afloat, wasn’t there?

Of course not.

In a move that couldn’t look more calculatingly evil, officials reportedly met and, speaking for the University, decided that the University could not spare a cent for non-students, which the recent grads had just become. (For a closer look at what’s happening, look to the article on Page 1 and the column to the right.) The University encourages students to stay in the area and help the local economy. But when some actually do, and wind up needing help because of it, they’re abandoned.

Let’s get this straight: University President Lois B. DeFleur can allow huge numbers of discretionary dollars to be directed from an obscure source to fund a useless project — a now-defunct harebrained $400,000 digital stadium-style sign for the Vestal Parkway, for example — but can’t have a thousand or two redirected to help people in dire circumstances who aren’t covered through the usual channels.

Of course, we know the cash for things like this doesn’t just come out of nowhere. But certainly the president of a large research university must have discretionary money — an office budget, a car-maintenance budget, anything — that she can dip into for an undoubtedly humanitarian cause, and one that’s good for public relations to boot.

If there’s any time to step up to the plate, this is it. Current students — future alumni, as we’re tactlessly called on the first day of freshman orientation — and especially those in Harpur College are already becoming more and more disheartened with the way they’re treated by BU. The more they’re marginalized and administratively abused, the less likely they’ll be to donate to the University when, a month after they graduate, the hat-in-hand letters and phone calls start to come.