The very first thing I found interesting about the New Paltz Wikipedia page is the early development of the town. I always thought the dorm buildings at SUNY New Paltz had funny names, but I also always knew they had to mean something, particularly to the history of New Paltz. Upon reading the New Paltz Wikipedia pages,  I realized, once again in my life, that things are not just named to be named; names are almost always carefully selected to suit a thing in sometimes unexpected ways. When I moved on campus as a freshman, I saw the new dorm buildings called Lenape and Esopus as an option in which to love. They were freshly constructed and beautiful on the inside, but I ultimately decided against them because they were “way too far” – which was a hugely common opinion among my peers. Understandable: they are on the far surrounding areas of the campus rather than in the center. Thus, many students, including myself, chose to live in buildings closer to classes and ignored the brand-new dorm buildings built on the perimeter of the campus, despite all of their niceties. Since then, Lenape and Esopus have dropped out of my mental consciousness completely, until I read the history of New Paltz on Wikipedia and fully realized where the names for these dorm buildings came from. New Paltz was formed in 1678, and while Hugenot settlers were trying to expand the town perimeters, they “purchased a patent for the land surrounding present day New Paltz from a Lenape tribe known as the Esopus” – how funny! It all makes sense now. While someone was trying to figure out what to name the new dorms being built outside the center of the actual campus, they directly paralleled the experience to when, over a hundred years ago, the actual town of New Paltz was looking for surrounding areas to expand their boundaries. In the campus situation, the campus is the town, and the buildings of Lenape and Esopus are the surrounding lands acquired. I thought this correlation was funny and thoughtful, on whoever named the building’s part. It reveals a part of the history of New Paltz I never even thought existed nor even thought about at all. All I could say was, “how… funny.” It really inspired me to look into things more and not just brush off everything as something that is not intimate or carefully named.

The New Paltz history pages are pretty informative and interesting, however I was really looking forward to how the town garnered its whole “hippie culture” and rock n’ roll façade that is still used so effectively in marketing the town (i.e. The Groovy Blueberry, Rock da Pasta, etc). I was disappointed to see that this was left out of the history of the town, besides the various protests that went on in the history of the campus. Yet, this omission revealed something else to me. It reminded me of the changes I’ve seen in the New Paltz campus since I’ve been here four years ago. The school logo has been changed from an old historical portrait of Old Main to a sciencey, geometric (and ugly) abstraction. The newest school building besides the renovated Old Main is that grotesque pyramid, and I’ve also heard that the school has been trying desperately to promote its engineering, science, and business departments. Combined with the realization that cops have also always ruthlessly focused upon reducing drug use within New Paltz, this all makes me feel as if New Paltz is trying to banish its reputation as a “hippie school” – High Times magazine actually dubbed the school as the #7 “Counterculture College” in the United States. I have been suspecting this for years, and a look at the New Paltz history pages on Wikipedia has finally verified my idea! How fascinating.

http://hightimes.com/entertainment/ht_admin/3027