I cannot say I am too surprised at the short amount of information on Wikipedia written on the town of New Paltz. In my opinion, the town is not too known by residents of New York City and although the town is greatly unique in its own way, it is quite small and usually reserved compared to the busy city that I come from. I always found it odd that the “village” of New Paltz and the “town” of New Paltz are considered two distinct areas and the Wikipedia page does mention this fact. Another unsurprising statistic was that the racial makeup of the town was 73% white. Clearly the town is not too diverse in that sense but at the same time it differs from a segregated white town because the community embraces diversity in so many ways. Probably the most excited piece of information on the New Paltz Wikipedia page was: “New Paltz was the place in which the character Penny Johnson (Cynthia Rhodes) got an abortion in the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing, which was set in the early 1960s”. That blew my mind and now I must re-watch the movie to see if it’s true. The section on “culture” in the page listed several celebrations but had very brief descriptions on them so those could have been elaborated on in a bit more detail. I feel New Paltz does have a vast amount of transportation; being an upstate town. For example, Trailways bus station is incredibly convenient, there’s the New Paltz loop which is not listed but exists and the bus that goes to Poughkeepsie located in town is also great for those wanting to get to the Metronorth. Overall, however, the content in this page was not too impressive.

Now on to SUNY New Paltz’s wikipedia page which was lengthier and somewhat more informative with content that did surprise me. This page informed me on events that seemed quite bizarre to me, such as: “In the fall of 1968, students rallied in support of Craig Pastor (now Craig DeYong) who had been arrested by New Paltz Village Police for desecration of the American flag which he was wearing as a superhero cape in a student film directed by Edward Falco.” Even though the paragraph focused on “student lead demonstrations” in the 60s and 70s, it disgusted and appalled me to read a sentence describing such an event that took place on my campus.­­ Another section that negatively stood out to me were the events that occurred in 1997 that attracted media attention. The first one was a Feminist conference on sex and sexuality that included a workshop on sex toys. I’m all for sexual freedom but I feel a workshop on sex toys does not set the greatest example. The second was a seminar in which New Paltz resident Carolee Schneemann introduces viewers to Interior Scroll in which she takes a scroll from her vagina and reads it to her audience. Although the greater picture of this event was to address: “Lacanian semiotics, gender issues, Marxism, the male art establishment, religious and cultural taboos”, I am not sure if many people would consider this the most educational approach. I do not believe these events promoted educational or positive nationwide attention but rather controversial media attention. I suppose attention is attention but, again, these demonstrations did not stir up proud feelings within me. On the other hand, the statistics and rankings were quite refreshing so that was a plus to see. The page was also fairly detailed in the many buildings SUNY New Paltz has on campus and had photographs of some of the buildings as well. Finally, the Alma Mater was a pleasant surprise and a cute little poem to wrap up the rollercoaster ride that was reading this Wikipedia page. To me, alumni were nothing fancy (besides Joe Turturro of course!).  However I feel there are more positives to the town and SUNY New Paltz that could have been discussed in detail such as the restaurants, town-life, rail trail, MANY clubs on campus and the religious places of worship in town. Unfortunately I do not feel these pages did enough justice to my college.