It’s not just collegiate leftists. There’s is a lot of migration from Upstate’s major metros into smaller Upstate cities. Elmira, host city to two maximum security prisons, has had influx from Syracuse and Rochester. Not enough to stop the city’s population decline, but enough to cause other issues.
Somehow I doubt those are all college kids.
I didn’t mean just the students. I meant professors, staff members, and assorted left wingers who gravitate toward jobs at places like Cornell and IC, make college towns uninhabitable via tax and spend, etc., and then decide to buy cheaper property in the surrounding areas, bringing their left-wing politics with them to those towns.