All The News That is Fit To Print at the University at Amherst
Richard P. Leader reporting

What the hell is UA, you ask? The history of Campus Crosshairs

Generation has always ended with a bang. The back page has always been the home of the most politically charged, dangerous, and most damn funny material to ever hit the ground at UB. Though consistent in tone throughout its history, it has never had a consistent face as it was passed from Contributing Editor to Editor. Two years ago, Evan Robb, a man with a heart of gold (who didn't smell half bad for a hippie) titled his back page "Campus Crosshairs" as Generation once again set its sites on the UB population in the tradition of the former Bitter Twisted column of years past, by Andrew Galarneau who is now with the Buffalo News. Campus Crosshairs was continued by Tariq Kamal who brought a new visual component to it as well, which I endeavored to maintain when I inherited the page myself.

Welcome to the State University of New York at Amherst, which we affectionately refer to as UA. It exists in a parallel universe: you won't find it on any maps or see commercials about it on TV but it is and has always been the largest public university in the Empire State.

Founded as the University of Buffalo in 1845, the school functioned as a private medical school for the local aristocracy. Built in the heart of Buffalo on the site of a former insane asylum and Native burial ground, its halls were stately in their elegance, rivaling those of the Ivy League. First branching out into associated fields such as Pharmacy, a School of Arts and Sciences was opened in 1913. Times were blissful until the 1960's rolled around and out of economic necessity the University of Buffalo became the University at Buffalo as it joined the State University of New York (SUNY) system and all sorts of riffraff (like the Irish) filtered in. Though there were plans to turn the school into the "Berkeley of the East" it soon crumbled as the community was unwilling to accept the concessions that University officials were forcing on them to achieve this, such as giving special rights to the military and corporations. Riots ensued, the Navy's secret on-campus project "Themis" was destroyed and 400 police in riot gear were positioned to pacify the "warzone." Unlike other schools, the faculty stood behind their students, 45 staging a now legendary sit-in of their own. Construction soon began on a new campus, North, which was located miles away in Amherst, a nearby suburb which was mostly swamp land and completely inappropriate for buildings of any kind. There has been much speculation about this decision, whether it was an inside land-deal that made some unknown party millions--or the mob--but either way, it had the effect of separating and dividing students to pacify them. Even to this day, as the undergraduate community has largely been removed from South, the old campus, the dorms there (those which have not yet been condemned) are still populated largely by African American students while the white transplants from Long Island have found a new home in the suburbia of Amherst.

Campus Crosshairs has always endeavored to honestly assess our school and its community--and to do so, we have no choice but to see it as the University at Amherst, the one at Buffalo was killed by the know-it-all rich white patriarchs a long time ago.

Welcome to UA.