Has anyone besides us noticed that when Binghamton University’s administration makes one of its inevitable errors, it’s always the students who seem to pay for it?

The latest debacle is the lack of common room furniture that greeted a number of College-in-the-Woods residents when they moved into their Mohawk and Cayuga Hall suites this August. After having already paid the $5,000 to $5,500-per-year fee to live on campus, the students, who now have to sit on the floor of their common rooms, were a tad miffed — and we don’t blame them one bit.

From what we could gather, BU’s Office of Residential Life claims the problem is the fault of Physical Facilities for not finishing up repairs to the furniture quickly enough. At the same time, Physical Facilities blames Residential Life for not ordering the repairs and cleaning sooner.

Needless to say, this middle-school-worthy round of The Blame Game that the two departments are playing greatly increases our confidence and respect in this University.

Instead of allowing the bottom-sore students to borrow a few pieces of furniture from the floor study lounges, or finding another temporary solution to keep their butts off the ground, the resident assistant were instructed to patrol common rooms for “stolen furniture,” basically assuring that the students remained without furniture indefinitely and subjecting them to treatment more worthy of criminals or unruly children than chairless victims.

But wait … we’re confused. Aren’t the students supposed to be the top priority here?

We realize that the lounge furniture is supposed to be for communal use, but as the saying goes, desperate times call for desperate measures, and if these aren’t extenuating circumstances, then we don’t know what are.

All right, so mistakes can happen, we understand that, and we may have been able to turn an understanding eye away from Res Life’s latest screwup if their actions hadn’t made it so painfully obvious that the welfare of the students was not first on their minds, and still isn’t. When residential buildings were under repair five years ago, the University relocated students to the Holiday Inn across the Vestal Parkway. Doesn’t a little loaner furniture appear to be in order?

Though some of the furniture was returned Monday, there are still students sitting on the floor, with only the less-than-comforting statement that Res Life hopes to have furniture for them by spring semester. Not good enough.

So Res Life: how about getting your act together and showing your paying customers (a-hem!) that they’re on the top of your list?

And all you CIW residents without furniture: were it us, we would be demanding some form of monetary reimbursement for our troubles — or maybe even a free massage or two for our sore asses.