The Student Association held its eighth meeting of the Senate for this semester on Tuesday evening. Following the meeting being called to order and quorum being satisfied, the meeting began swiftly. The meeting and agenda minutes were approved allowing the meeting to move to it’s first order of business, guests to the Senate.

The first guest to the Senate for the evening was the student organization Two and a Half. They have existed for nine years on campus and their main goal is to combat and raise awareness about sexual violence and assault. Two and a Half will be hosting their “Raise Your Voice” event, which has been taking place annually for the past nine years. The event will be taking place at the end of April corresponding with Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Although the organization does have funds in their budget, and they have paired up with SAPB, they requested funding to help with the costs for the rest of the event. Two senators offered to write the bill which will be voted and presented at a later meeting this semester.

The discussion of Broad Based Fees which include fees for health, technology and athletics, were presented so students were fully aware as to where their money was going. The Broad Based Fee for this upcoming school year will be $25, split three ways to cover the health, technology and athletics fee. The health fee includes everything from counseling services offered on campus, to the clinic/nurses office at Mary Walker. This fee in particular also allows the lifestyles center within Mary Walker to operate. This fee allows things such as toilet talk, open mic night, student health surveys and condom deals on Wednesdays to exist.  The technology fee is also essential to campus because of the prominent presence of technology in students’ daily lives. They are looking to increase the technology fee, but that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be any additional benefits that comes along with the increase. The increased technology fee would allow SUNY Oswego to increase network bandwidth and add close a million wireless access points around campus. The technology fee is put in place to ensure that all students have the best access to internet and assistance at all times. Finally, the athletics fee is also expected to increase. Since SUNY Oswego has had the second highest number of teams in the conference for the year, there is a greater need to help fund/support the various sports teams on campus.

The meeting moved smoothly onto executive reports seeing as there were was no one for public comment. Student Association President Emily Nassir was the first to give her executive report. There were no new updates on OzFest, however Nassir has been very busy with meetings to get the SA Food Pantry up and running. Nassir has attended several meetings and has another one coming up to discuss the plans and budget for the pantry. Nassir also stated that SA is currently in the process of working on the new contract with Centro, the bus that allows students to travel from one side of campus to the other as well as from campus to in town and vice versa.  Nassir will continue to update students and senators and new information arises.

Shelby Gallaro, SA Vice President was next to deliver her short and sweet executive report. Gallaro revealed that over 900 students voted in the elections on Monday and Tuesday. The election included the voting on the referendum to determine if the student registration fee should be mandatory or not, as well as the election of the new offices for President and Vice President of SA. Matthew Peters shortly followed Gallaro in executive reports, in which he informed senators he started to go through budget requests for the clubs and organizations. There will be more meetings throughout the week to work on and approve the budgets. So far, the process has been a success.

Committee Reports was the next order on the agenda for the evening. Rules and Judiciary revealed that they will now be meeting bi-weekly for the duration of the semester. Finance Committee did not meet this week, however they will meet next week with the several clubs and organizations whose budgets need to be written in order to be proposed and voted on. The Involvement Committee closed out committee reports by revealing that they are currently working on the “Miss-A-Meal” project for the end of the semester.

Hall Council reports were delivered after committee reports, there were however fewer reports. Johnson Hall has reviewed and made changes to their constitution which will then be put to a new vote to see if it passes or not.

The short and sweet hall council reports led to the adjournment of the meeting seeing as there we no general, nor special orders for the evening. The Student Association meets every Tuesday in Lanigan 106, at 6pm. The Senate meetings are all open to the public and students are encouraged to attend these meetings to voice their opinions and express their concerns.

The University Police Department is participating in an intensive campaign to ensure that students and faculty buckle-up during their commutes. The program has been a success for the past twelve years.

Police are looking for violations on campus, although the traffic stops may be made off campus.

As part of the nation-wide ‘Buckle-Up Day And Night’ campaign, University Police will have special patrols out looking for motorists who are not wearing their seatbelts.

People not wearing a seatbelt are 30 times more likely to be ejected from a vehicle. Assistant University Police Chief, Kevin Velzy, has been involved with university police for thirty years.

“Because we are a Police Department on a college campus, the majority of our drivers are of college age. We do have some older people, older drivers, that are employees or some people just passing through campus,” said Kevin.

According to the New York State University Police Department, Motor Vehicle accidents are the number one cause of death for those aged up to fifty-four in the United States.

It has been proven that just wearing a seatbelt reduces the risk of death or injury by fifty percent. As a matter of fact, airbags are not a substitute for seatbelts.

More than half of teens aged thirteen to nineteen and adults aged twenty to forty-four who died in crashes in 2015 were unrestrained at the time of the crash.

Men are more likely than women to be unbuckled.

“The crashes have dropped. Our compliance rate, what they also look for in these grant programs, has gone way up. When we first started our compliance rate was about seventy-five percent, which means seventy-five percent of the people that are required to wear a seatbelt in the front seat of a vehicle. Seventy-five percent of them were, and twenty-five percent were not,” said Kevin.

The compliance rate on campus currently lies at ninety-three percent.

A ticket for unrestrained motorists is fifty dollars with no points initially deducted from the license, whereas distracted driving is worth five points on the license in addition to a fine between fifty and two-hundred dollars.

According to the New York State University Police Department, unrestrained motorists involved in a crash are almost four times as likely to suffer a traumatic brain injury compared to those wearing a seatbelt.