By Eoin Gallagher
After a disappointing loss at Ithaca, the Oswego State men’s lacrosse team will look to bounce back when they hit the road to face the Morrisville Mustangs. The Lakers are 1-1 on the season. Sophomore Kyle Bacon leads the team offensively with 6 points, while fellow attackman Bobby Emerson is off to a good start as well, posting 4 goals in two games. Freshman goalie Kevin O’Donnell has recorded 32 saves on 54 shots on goal in two games – including a 21 save performance against Ithaca – the most by any Laker goalie in the past five seasons.
Morrisville has struggled early on this year going 0-3 with losses against Geneseo and Oneonta, two teams Oswego will meet later when SUNYAC play picks up.
The game is scheduled for a noon start on Saturday.
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Route 104 construction in Oswego continues
By Josh Holfoth
OSWEGO, NY – The construction along route 104 that has been going on since July of 2016 has become an unwelcome visitor to local home owner Frank Palmer.
The traffic congestion along with the loud noises and dust from construction Palmer said has brought him other residents problems for the last two years.
The 4 mile strip of the state road stretching from the SUNY Oswego campus entrance, west, the route 104A intersection in southwest Oswego is getting widened 2 feet on either side. New drainage gutters and culverts are also being built along with the road getting repaved.
Project engineer for the state department of transportation Frank Brosch oversees the project. Brosch says the improvements being made to the road will make it safer as there has been problems with this in the past. One of the main reasons Brosch said for widening the road was because many tractor trailers were going off the road into ditches in that area. Widening the shoulder of the road will create a safer environment for traffic and tractor trailers; despite this Frank Palmer said he is still skeptical about how much safer it will actually be because of the faster speeds the trucks will be more inclined to go.
After more than a year the majority of the work on the $14 million dollar project is done. Despite some weather delays this past spring the better weather now means the roadwork should be done by the end of December.
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Clown Sightings in Oswego
OSWEGO, N.Y. – Clown sightings have been on the rise across the country after the first reported incidents occurred in North and South Carolina. The clown epidemic has reached Upstate New York with reports in Syracuse, Auburn and Rochester. Although dressing up as a clown can be creepy and make people feel unsafe, it isn’t a crime.
In a statement released by local authorities, police have advised people not to dress up as clowns and wonder throughout neighborhoods.
“The Oswego Police Department has been made aware of rumors circulating via social media of the potential for people to dress up as clowns (similar to what you may have seen in other areas) in an attempt to scare kids and/or adults in our community. Please note this act could be considered a crime. Oswego Police will be on the lookout and encourage anyone who sees anything suspicious to contact 911 immediately,” said Oswego police.
The Phoenix Police Department is asking people to not dress up as clowns on Halloween, in a Facebook post made on Oct. 4. “if someone hides behind a clown costume with the intent to cause fear, alarm or commit a crime; we won’t be clowning around when they are apprehended,” said the department in the post.
Police in Syracuse are prepping up patrol in the city’s North Side after a 10-year-old boy was chased by three clowns on his way to school last week. In an interview with CNY, Central New York, Central, police said that people could be charged with harassment and loitering which are unlawful.
Clown sightings have started to pop up on college campuses across the country as well. Within the past week clowns have been spotted at Louisiana State University, LSU, Penn State and Oswego State University. There was a sighting in the Seneca Hall parking lot on Oct. 4 but nothing has been released by university police if it was a threat or not.
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Master’s project examines students’ relationships with technology
[et_pb_section][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text]Complicated relationship — The master’s in strategic communication “Integrated Media Projects” course analyzed data on students’ relationships with technology and developed this video summarizing some results. A group of master’s in strategic communication students, working a large-scale student survey from 2019, found students have a complicated relationship with technology and their smartphones.
The Student Survey on Attitudes Toward Technology (SSATT) is conducted annually to collect information from freshmen and seniors about their relationship to the technologies they use as students and young adults. The data analysis and media design exercise is carried out by students in the course “Integrated Media Projects” course, under the supervision of faculty advisor Ulises Mejias of the communication studies department, and with help of the college’s Office of Institutional Research and Assessment.
While that survey of 367 students preceded this semester’s move to remote learning, it nonetheless showed the internet and smartphones’ enormous impact on their lives.
Among the findings on how students live and learn with technology:
- 58 percent agree that the internet has had a positive effect on their lives
- 77 percent said they check their smartphones as soon as they wake up, although they admitted this habit can provide added stress and anxiety
- 71 percent agreed that they are distracted by their personal devices in class, while freshman are significantly more likely to lose focus in class/work by checking their cell phones than seniors
- Half of the students said they are distracted by their devices during face-to-face communication
- Two-thirds of the participants strongly agreed or agreed that they were notified by important issues through social media
- 68 percent of students said they look up more information on social issues discovered via social media
- 60 percent of students reported they fact-check or cross-check news stories
- 45 percent said they rely on social media as their only source of news
- 71 percent said they text others in class or when doing work outside of class
Some 2019 figures show the importance of access to reliable internet, even before this semester’s shift to learning online:
- 85.8 percent of participants said they strongly agreed or agreed they would not be able to maintain coursework without the internet
- 77.7 percent either strongly agreed or agreed that not having access to high-speed internet would impact their academic performance
- Seniors relied on high speed internet access significantly more than freshman
Building awareness
Strategic communication major Fabio Machado said the findings should prove helpful for SUNY Oswego students to better understand their relationship with technology, as well as for anybody interested in how technology and academics can better connect.
“I think we can improve the relationship, and learn how to take what is positive from it and try to maybe work on the negatives,” said Machado, who was the social media analyst for the project. “Maybe we can look at how we can make our students more aware about how they’re using technology and what is beneficial with them, what is positive about your interactions and what is not. What you can control better.”
Fellow strategic communication major Nick Derbabian noted that data was especially relevant because it utilized attitudes from fellow students. Since it was the first survey of its type, he added, the group was working with a blank slate in finding students’ positive and negative relationships with technology.
“I think a big finding that we saw was how it was contradicting sometimes. They found their phone and having access to the internet were sometimes distracting to them,” said Derbabian, the project support officer. “But they also said: ‘We absolutely need computers and the internet to get our coursework done.’”
“They acknowledge how distracting it can be in classes or how when they wake up it was the first thing they check,” Machado said.
The team was surprised to learn two out of every three students relied on social media for news to such a high extent, but found it encouraging that many sought out other sources.
In addition to Machado and Derbabian, the master’s students in the team included Kurt Albrecht, data analyst; Curtis Cady, video designer and producer; Brenna Maclsaac, website and tap course designer; and Pedro Boller, website designer and SEO analyst.
For more information on the findings, project and process, visit the team’s multimedia website.
This article was originally featured at: https://www.oswego.edu/news/story/masters-project-examines-students-relationships-technology via the SUNY Oswego Office of Communications and Marketing.
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