Schools

Stony Brook: Southampton Windmill Will Be Lit

Annual lighting ceremony canceled, but windmill will glow for the holidays.

Stony Brook University said Friday it still plans to light the landmark windmill on its Southampton campus, despite reports that the school had axed the tradition.

However, the university acknowledged that the annual Lighting of the Windmill, a celebration open to the community at large, will not take place this year.

In a statement released Thursday that referred to Stony Brook President Samuel L. Stanley Jr. as "Grinch Stanley," New York State Assemblyman Fred Thiele, I-Sag Harbor, said the university canceled the windmill lighting, but university spokeswoman Lauren Sheprow said Friday the windmill will be lit sometime in mid-December.

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"The university is still planning to turn on the windmill lights ... but given the enormous state budget cuts, we have to prioritize our limited funds, which means that the university cannot sponsor a community-wide holiday event," Sheprow said. "However, we invite the community to utilize the facility and the grounds around it should there be a request to hold an event there."

According to Thiele, the lighting of the windmill was a tradition that was celebrated even when the campus was closed during its transition from its affiliation with Long Island University to becoming part of Stony Brook. It has been hailed as an event that brought "town and gown" together, he said. The lighting of the windmill traditionally took place on the first Friday of December.

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To not light the windmill at all would have been "pouring salt in the wound," said Mark Epley, mayor of the Village of Southampton.

News of the windmill lighting is the latest in the controversy surrounding the campus in Shinnecock Hills. On Nov. 17, SUNY's board of trustees ratified Stanley's April decision to close the residential program at Stony Brook Southampton and relocate the bulk of the academic programs to the main campus.

That move to shutter much of the campus motivated a group of Stony Brook Southampton students to file a lawsuit against the university seeking to restore what had been cut. In August,  because the school failed to the Stony Brook University Council in the decision-making process. The lawsuit is still pending with an injunction preventing Stony Brook from making any major decisions regarding Southampton.

"While the injunction is in place, the university continues to abide by the directives of the court," Sheprow said following the SUNY trustees' Nov. 17 vote.

The future of the historic windmill itself could also become a subject of debate. Following the Nov. 17 vote, Epley sent a letter to Stanley indicating the village's interest in re-acquiring the windmill, which he said originally stood on Windmill Lane in the Village of Southampton for nearly 200 years and had recently been restored.

Citing rumors about the possible closure and development of the campus, Epley's letter states, "We hope this never happens, but if unfortunate circumstances do require the closing of the campus, we would be interested in preserving the windmill and restoring it to a location on village-owned property near where it originally stood turning grain into flour."

The letter suggests either acquiring the windmill as a gift from the university or purchasing it with privately-secured funds.

The fact remains, though, that nearly eight months after the Southampton cuts, the wounds are still fresh for some – like Caroline Dwyer, a Quogue resident and former Stony Brook Southampton student.

"They continue to claim it is not closed," she said, "while they quietly discontinue every aspect of the campus that would indicate it is, in fact, an operational facility."


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