Talk:State University of New York/Archives/2015

Yes/No Flagship

The article erroneously claims that Buffalo is the flagship campus. One of the particularities of the SUNY system is that there is no declared flagship among the four university centers: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/education/25suny-t.html. There is periodic discussion of declaring one, and accompanying lobbying. While Binghamton and Stony Brook, as well as Buffalo, have claims to being the de facto SUNY flagship, there is to date no official flagship campus.

Attempted to edit entry and added referenced to reflect the actual state of affairs, but reverted by partisans who seem invested in Buffalo's alleged flagship state. ~dak~ 15:54, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

'university at buffalo is the flagship. The College Board and buffalo's own site, are accurate, valid, current sources. The College Board is the one who put together the list of flagship universities in the first place and it lists buffalo's as it for new york. Look at the definition of a flagship University, on Wikipedia even, it says it's determined by the state and college board. It's the largest and biggest public school that has all the big division 1 athletics for the state. It is the most well known and highest research activity. https://en.m.wiki.x.io/wiki/Flagship_university#Education `The College Board, for example, defines flagship universities as the best-known institutions in the state, noting that they were generally the first to be established and are frequently the largest and most selective, as well as the most research-intensive public universities, it is also the states biggest University '. Which buffalo is. It's crazy it keeps getting removed, unless you find something that says it's not or another University in New York is the flagship then buffalo remains to be the flagship. There is even much talk at the state that it's the flagship, it's own website makes the flagship designation. Nothing else in new york comes close and that's backed up by sources, the College Board article was posted this October as well as the universities own website which is run by suny!!!!! I'm also not in anyway affiliated just a proud new yorker.

You may not be partisan, and I apologize for implying so above. However, the claim that Buffalo is SUNY flagship is incorrect. There is no single SUNY flagship, as amply evidenced by periodic debate by state officials over whether to declare one. Cherry-picking two online mentions does not constitute sound and reliable evidence. Especially since one is a vague statement on Buffalo's own site that Buffalo is "A flagship", as in one of several (note also that each SUNY campus maintains and manages their own web presence, this content was not generated and is not controlled by central SUNY administration as you imply. As for your point about flagships being bigger than other state schools, having several sports teams, and more research activity than others. The latter two are highly debatable, and both Binghamton and Stony Brook could argue that they are ahead of or equal to Buffalo in those regards. As for enrollment, fully half of the ten largest public universities are decidedly not state flagships (ASU, UCF, FIU, Texas A&M, MSU), see http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/List_of_United_States_university_campuses_by_enrollment. If the wiki page on Flagships you mention offers these definitions, it should probably also be changed. ~dak~ 03:49, 20 November 2014 (UTC)

And I disagree with you, your making some of your own claims and ignoring the information laid out, but fair enough I respect the angel where you are coming from. No need to beat a dead horse at this point there's just different sides to this coin, which in the end doesn't really matter a whole much. It's open for discussion but it should still be left in. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Howaboutity (talk • contribs) 11:31, November 20, 2014‎

First, please remember to sign your posts (using four tildes: ~~~~); it's very confusing when you don't do that.

Moving on the issue at hand, I agree with dak that it appears that this system specifically eschews designating a flagship campus. In fact, the only substantive information about "flagship" that I could find on the SUNY system website was about the chancellor's explicit decision to not designate a flagship.

Since the system hasn't designated a flagship campus and in fact has gone out of its way to not do this, this article shouldn't mislead readers into believing that is not the case. In fact, it's noteworthy that this system doesn't have one or more flagship campuses because that makes it a rarity among public U.S. state systems. So that should probably be mentioned in this article.

However, it might also be worth mentioning that some reporters and scholars have designated one or more campuses the "flagship" in various publications. UB is certainly on that list but I found a few sources that appeared to mention a governor stepping into the fray a few years ago in favor of Stony Brook which might also be worth noting. But any material added along these lines should be not mislead readers into believing that the flagship designation is official in terms of the SUNY system office or the state government. ElKevbo (talk) 03:17, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Another editor has - without discussing the issue here in Talk - reverted my edits and added an additional source. I continue to maintain that the sources are insufficient to support the claim that UB is the sole flagship of this system in an official capacity. The new source adds nothing to this discussion as it only mentions "flagship" in a quote about the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and its School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences that says nothing whatsoever about the larger university and its role within the SUNY system. ElKevbo (talk) 13:22, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

The fact that you are ignoring the links is unheard of. Buffalo's own site, college board, and outside source : (Floridas education system) that backs up the College Board claim, and Suny's on site. You keep saying you don't agree and you don't believe, but it's not up to you, the sources back up the flagship claim . These are reputable educational sources. Maybe you're getting caught up on the term flagship, and from your past edits it seems you don't care about what other websites and people have to say about the topic at hand. But if all these are claiming buffalo's a flagship it cannot be ignored, and will be staying on the page§Sandyunderhere (talk) 15:08, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Have you actually read the sources you're citing or the others that have been provided? Neither the university nor the system identify UB as the flagship of the system. At times, the university claims that it is a flagship and it might be worth documenting that self-made claim. Other publications have applied their own criteria to classify UB, Stony Brook, or both as flagships. So to use Wikipedia's voice (i.e., authoritative and objective) to say that UB is the system's official or sole flagship is so wrong that it raises questions about editors' competence and objectivity.

Please re-read the sources you've cited, the ones provided above, and the relevant ones in the Education section of Flagship. ElKevbo (talk) 15:51, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

These sources (one of them being suny itself) , the University itself, are saying ub is the flagship. I respect where you are coming from I do but I believe these accounts outweigh anything you have brought up. §Sandyunderhere (talk) 18:44, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

I don't think we're hearing one another so I'll take a different approach and list each of the sources that have been provided thus far and provide commentary for each one:

• http://www.buffalo.edu/about_ub/ub_at_a_glance.html is a webpage produced by UB that explicitly says that it is "a flagship institution in the State University of New York system" (emphasis added).
• http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-and-fees-flagship-universities-over-time is a broken link. (And the fact that you have repeatedly inserted this link and insisted that it's solid evidence in favor of your claims without even checking to see if the link actually works is quite damaging to your credibility.)
• http://flbog.edu/about/_doc/budget/tuition/College-Board-Flagship.pdf is a table hosted by the Florida SUS Board of Governors that reproduces or summarizes a College Board table. There is no context for this table so it's not clear if the Florida SUS Board of Governors is supporting the accuracy of this document or merely reproducing and hosting it for some reason. This is conjecture but I doubt they support the accuracy of the document as that system has long considered UF and FSU to be co-equal as the system's top-tier universities (largely because FSU is in the state capital, IMHO) and recently added one or two other universities to that list as the state's population and its university enrollments have continued to explode.
• http://blog.suny.edu/2013/01/suny-leads-the-way-to-21st-century-innovation-3/ is a blog hosted by SUNY. The only mention of "flagship" is in a discussion of the role of the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in the current UB strategic plan where the school is described as "a flagship institution for the University at Buffalo." This source doesn't appear to say anything about UB itself as a flagship university or the system's sole flagship university.
• http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/education/25suny-t.html is a New York Times article that is cited in the discussion above but not in this article. However, it appears to be the only source that directly addresses the issue at hand: "Virtually alone in the country, there was (and still is) no flagship institution [in the SUNY system]." This 2010 article is a few years old but I haven't found any evidence that this has changed. In fact, if you search the SUNY website for "flagship" you'll come across several document that precede and follow the 2010 NYT article that explicitly say the same thing: The SUNY system has explicitly eschewed designating a flagship university.

Those are the sources that have been provided so far. The ones you have cited, Sandyunderhere, do not support your claim that UB is the system's sole flagship in any official capacity. In fact, the university itself doesn't even appear to make that claim and the system explicitly denies the existence of a flagship university!

So why are you writing otherwise in Wikipedia articles? Have I missed something? Are there additional sources that contradict my conclusions or alter my understanding of the sources that have been provided so far? ElKevbo (talk) 19:47, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Are you kidding? They explicitly say that it's the flagship. No doubting that, proof is in the source. Sorry you feel compeled to disagree but facts are fact, and it does 100% call itself, along with the sources that ub is the flagship.§Sandyunderhere (talk) 21:26, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

You really have to respond to the arguments presented above item-by-item. Simply plugging your ears and continuing to insist that you're correct in the face of reasoned arguments and quotes pulled from the very sources you've provided is completely insufficient. If you continue along these lines I'm going to stop assuming good faith and assume that you're simply argumentative and disruptive. ElKevbo (talk) 22:10, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

I'm just presenting the facts from the sources there is no other argument. The sources say it's a flagship because it is. And in no way am I disruptive, I'm just sticking to the facts. You seem a little bit hostile for no reason. I wish to resolve this quickly and correctly which I feel is being done. §Sandyunderhere (talk) 00:19, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

You're obviously not here to contribute; your refusal to actually address the issues at hand and willingness to not only edit war across multiple articles with multiple editors but also to employ sockpuppets to do so makes that abundantly clear. If you change your mind, please let us know but in the meantime I'm pursuing means to have you blocked. ElKevbo (talk) 01:23, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Please note that this discussion and and related articles have been extensively edited by an editor using over a dozen sockpuppets, including Sandyunderhereand, Howaboutity, and most (all?) editors in favor of describing UB as the SUNY flagship. ElKevbo (talk) 17:48, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

SUNY at Buffalo is the flagship university for New York state. This is based on numerous factors and publications. Now the system itself doesn't define one itself , rather 4 flagship centers , but all publications(which include government resources/collegeboard/and others) all point to the University at Buffalo as the flagship. And as such, it has shown to be the flagship campus. Here is a dump of some of the sources: . Now this is consistent with what is found on http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Flagship#Education . This also matches what other universities are using to define/categorize themselves as flagships and also goes beyond certain institutions. Please take a look at all the sources , and see they match what is found on the actual education flagship page. Some of the responses (from what it looks like) are just because the system itself doesn't define one , which is not important ( the system seems to lean towards U at B as the flagship anyway ) . Take a look here - http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Category:Flagship_universities_in_the_United_States . Boise State is on there over University of Idaho. University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M are both on there. As well as Ohio State University over Ohio University. State University of New York at Buffalo fits with all the other universities on that list and is the flagship.AlaskanNativeRU (talk) 03:02, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

"Flagship" as applied to universities has no coherent of consistent definition. Different sources use the the term for different purposes, and it means or signifies different things. There is no single definitive "list" of flagships and there is no basis to proclaim any one source superior to any other for the purpose. If a reliable source deems UB a flagship then it is. But so then is any other school in the NY system, where reliably sourced. JohnInDC (talk) 03:36, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

The sources provided seem to link University at Buffalo as the flagship though. No other SUNY school is ever listed in any list , its always buffalo. Furthermore its multiple lists from multiple places as well as articles. Now it alone dictates that it gets the flagship designation on its page , regardless of anything else but I would like to add, how does biose state or Texas a&m get this designation if they're not even on one list. It seems a few articles are nit picked in those situations and there's some confusion as to wheter they should or not. With buffalo there is none. It seems all the sources back it up as such ( which also list it with other flagship's from other states ) and even some articles. Overall I think its very easy to see that Buffalo is seen as the flagship.AlaskanNativeRU (talk) 12:36, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Merger from State University of New York Board of Trustees

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was to merge both pages Nwerner1 (talk) 11:25, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

---

I think State University of New York Board of Trustees should be merged in here as it's not a separately notable subject and this article's not that long. Stifle (talk) 14:29, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Merging sounds good, it had not occurred to me before that it would be ok to include the Board of Trustees inside the University`s page when I created it. Thanks for your suggestion. (Nwerner1 (talk) 17:29, 17 April 2015 (UTC))

• Support. Makes sense... Regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 10:34, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Hello, I am not sure about this. The board list is now a major part of this article and probably WP:UNDUE considering that most coverage of this topic is about something other than the board. The board seems to meet WP:N. I am not aware of other universities having the board listed as it is here. I also worry that this material will become out of date without at least annual updating, which is not something on which Wikipedia articles about universities can depend.

Stifle - can you say why you do not think this is separately notable? Can you and DASonnenfeld comment on the extent to which either of you has seen a precedent on Wikipedia for managing this sort of information? I think the information could be placed either here or in its own article, but my thought is that probably it would improve the quality of coverage for the university and the board if they were kept separate. I am not sure. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:45, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

• Hi User:Bluerasberry, I think the board list fits in very nicely here, in a not imbalanced way. Since this article is about the SUNY System the comparable cases would include the University of California ( separate article), University of Wisconsin System (no separate article; passing mention in main article), and Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (included in main article). Kind regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 16:37, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to one external link on State University of New York. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20130728113747/http://src.buffalo.edu/studentaccount/falltuition.shtml to http://src.buffalo.edu/studentaccount/falltuition.shtml

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

archive did not work, will update links instead.AlaskanNativeRU (talk) 01:29, 31 October 2015 (UTC)