by Michael Reilly
Oswego, NY- A former personal aide to President Barack Obama will be visiting Oswego State this Friday. Ferial Govishiri will be the keynote speaker of the Student Leadership Conference. Her speech will center around finding and focusing on one’s passion in life.
Govashiri was born in Iran and immigrated to the United States with her family when she was six months old.
This Friday, a very special event as well as exciting opportunity will be taking place here at SUNY Oswego. Former personal aide to President Barack Obama and active member of the Iranian American Women Foundation Ferial Govashiri will be speaking on campus at the auditorium in Marano Campus Center around 7:30pm. She’ll be holding the position of keynote speaker which is being put on by the division of student affairs and enrollment management. Her talk will be free and opened to the public, in other words a perfect way spend a Friday evening to kick of the weekend.
Now a fact about Govashiri some may not know is that she was actually born in Iran
Of course as most are aware, President Trump has recently issued a temporary travel ban on refugees and citizens from seven Muslim majority countries including Govashiri’s home country of Iran.
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Student Association Update: March 15th
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.
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Bullets for Broadway: Coming to a Stage Near You!

Come one come all to the local touring dinner theater musical interactive experience that is “Bullets for Broadway”. Filled with music, amazing local talent, comedy, romance, and a surprising murder mystery. This show will leave you will a full stomach and hands in the air wanting more from this incredibly talented cast all from Oswego county!
Director of the show Derek Potocki says the cast has been hard at work for about a month and that is has “all kinds of twisted plots, crazy things going on, you never know what’s gonna come at you next, it’s really interactive theater at its best.” With all kinds of musical numbers like “Me and You” featuring Jodi Halczyn as Toffee Alto and Peter Fekete as Tony Alto where they confess their love for eachother. Or “Mafia Queen” also featuring Jodi Halczyn as Toffee Alto and Stephanie Johnson as a chorus girl where they sing about Toffee being a mafia queen will leave you laughing yourself right out of your seat.
This show is being put up by none other than Oswego’s very own Theater DuJour! Finding out about how the company was started speaking with Tammy Wilkinson, founder of this company says “we were bringing shows to the Oswego Players, my role there was also producer, but we were having a little bit of a challenge getting butts in the seats and so we had the idea to bring them out into the community”. And good thing she did because they’ve been on a roll ever since, constantly in the media surrounding central New York.
If you would like to catch this show you have until the end of October. Their first show is October 11th in Mexico, NY at The Eis House. Second in Altmar, NY on October 14th at the Tailwater Lodge. Third in Syracuse, NY on October 23rd at Barnes Hiscock Mansion. And your last chance to see this marvelous show is October 26th in Fulton, NY at Virgilio’s Event Center. Tickets are $60 and can be found on their website http://dujourcny.com/. For more information you can reach them at (518)253-6930.
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Oswego successfully hosts 46th annual NAPA Super DIRT Week
By Renee Dunn
OSWEGO, N.Y.– The Oswego Speedway was packed with fans two weekends ago as the cars lapped around the track at what is also known as Racing’s Biggest Party. NAPA Super DIRT Week is a yearly race in which the speedway brings in more than 9,600 cubic yards of clay to convert the asphalt track to dirt for the Super DIRTcar Series.
The track has been hosting the annual racing event for the past two years instead of its original location at the Central New York Raceway Park in Hastings after construction stalled.
Now that the dust has settled, Oswego residents and city officials said they hope it will return – this time for good. Mayor Billy Barlow said in an interview with WRVO that Super DIRT Week has brought in roughly 70,000 fans, and has been a great way to bring tourism to the city.
“To get them in town and see all that we have, see that we’re a waterfront community with Lake Ontario and the Oswego River, some of the other assets we have here – I think – is a beneficial thing and perhaps encourages them to visit again, even if it’s not racing related,” Barlow said.
Super DIRT Week in Oswego has earned a great reaction from all sides. Super DIRT Week fan Bobby Sweeney said he thinks the location of this year’s race was really cool because the “small town” overlooks “a big lake like Lake Ontario.” Sweeney said that the racing has been awesome this past year and that he would love to see it stay in Oswego.
If you would like to learn more about Super DIRT Week, go to http://www.superdirtweekonline.com/
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