By William Corsi
OSWEGO, N.Y. — The trees are changing color, pumpkin spice is back, and Halloween is right around the corner. Students at SUNY Oswego shared their excitement with Reporter William Corsi.
Of the 27 people who were polled about their plans for Halloween, 19 of them said they were going to dress up for Halloween and 16 of them said they will be going out to get candy and celebrating with friends.
Student Marina Pantoliano said that she likes Halloween is one of the only holidays where people really get into it besides Christmas.
Some students said certain aspects of halloween make them feel uncomfortable.
“People running around in masks kind of creeps me out,” Student Dalton Bisson said.
Halloween takes place on Tuesday this year.
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Student Association Update: March 8th
On Tuesday Evening the Student Association held its weekly meeting of the Senate. The meeting was called to order making it the seventh meeting of the Spring semester. Quorum to begin the meeting was met and following the approval of the meeting minutes and agenda, the meeting proceeded.
The first and only guest to the Senate for the evening was a new campus organization Strong and Healthy. This new organization is committed to teaching students aboudy body confidence as well as the importance of living a healthy lifestyle. On April 22nd in the Marano Campus Center at 6pm, Strong and Healthy will be joining another organization on campus, Pencils of Promise, to host an exercise circuit event. The goal of this event is to encourage students to formulate daily workout habits and routines. Students will be given the chance to participate in various events such as, push-up contests, dance competitions and more. Strong and Healthy requested funds from the Senate to help promote the new club and ensure the event’s success. The funds would help contribute to tee shirts, water bottles, healthy snacks, backdrop for pictures and prizes for the event. Two senators offered to help write the bill and proposal which will be voted on at a later date.
In light of there being no public comment for the evening, the meeting moved on to executive reports. Student Association Vice President Shelby Gallaro, was the first to deliver her report. Gallaro shared with senators that Laura Kelly, organizer for SUNY Oswego’s homecoming, was looking for three to four senators, who would like to become a part of the student homecoming committee. Any senator, freshman through juniors, are eligible to participate and if interested, they were encouraged to email Gallaro.
SA President Emily Nassir, was the next to deliver her executive report. Nassir revealed that plans for the new SA website are well underway and she is currently looking into the photography portion of the webiste, which would feature all senators’ pictures, that way students are aware of who their campus representatives are. Nassir also shared with senators that the discount app is currently up and running. Students can download the collegediscounts app to their phones and then search SUNY Oswego to see all the discounts offered at the various businesses the school has partnered with to provide this service. In an earlier meeting this semester, Nassir shared a project she was working on with auxiliary services, but little information could be revealed at that time. Nassir revealed updates on this new project at Tuesday evening’s meeting. She will be working with auxiliary services to bring students’ food favorites from the dining halls, to the small markets like Lake Effect Cafe and Ontario Bagel Company located on campus. This new plan is generated toward students who commute or don’t have a meal plan, that way they don’t have to pay for a full meal at the dining hall, they can just pick up their favorite foods at one of the stores on campus. To progress the planning process, Nassir plans to generate a survey, which will then be placed on all of the class pages on Facebook. Students will be encouraged to list their favorite foods from the dining halls, that they wish to be sold in the various markets on campus. Nassir plans to keep the Senate updated on this new project as progress is made.
Matthew Peters SA Director of Finance, delivered his executive report following Nassir. Peters revealed the plans to dive into the new organization budgets for next year, next week. The senators will be reviewing the budgets within the next few weeks and in the final weeks of the semester, organizations will be given the chance to attend the weekly SA meetings to dispute the budget if they disagree with the budget given to their organization. To finish off his executive report, Peters stated that OzFest is moving along and hopefully all preparations will be finished and finalized by next week.
Generally, there are only three executive reports at each meeting, however, SA Director of Legislation, spoke to the Senate about “Rational Tuition 2020”. Under the trustees and government body of SUNY, tuition can be raised for students at a specific amount allocated by the Rational Tuition Bill passed five years ago. The goal of this bill was to allow students to be able to predict the amount of tuition they will be required to pay during their undergraduate schooling period. Currently, five years later, SUNY SA is pushing to renew the bill to avoid the unpredictability of increased tuition costs. Failing to renew the bill would result in the government having control over tuition costs which could result in an increase in tuition at any time.
The meeting moved swiftly onto hall council reports seeing as the SA committees were unable to meet this week. Mackin shared that their laker life event “Mash Safari” will be taking place this Friday at 8pm. The event will include snacks and beverages as well as live animals including a kangaroo, snakes, alligators and more. Funnelle Hall announced that they will be holding their “pie your RA day” on pie day. Students can pay a small fee to throw pie in their RA’s face and all money raised will go back to their hall council.
Organization reports were next on the agenda. Senators revealed the Oswegonian, the campus newspaper, is looking to put together a Business Sales Team. Their job will included going to local businesses to encourage them to purchase as space in the paper. Any senator or student interested, are encouraged to contact the Oswegonian.
There we no special orders for the evening, there was however one general order on the agenda. The Adrenaline Hip-Hop Team on campus is a new organization who requested funds from the Senate, to help the team with promotions. The funds requested are to help with flyers, markers, posters and paints, all to be used to help with club promotions. The proposed bill and budget was passed by general consent, and the fundy will allow the Adrenaline Hip-Hop dance team to get their name out to students on campus.
The meeting came to a close following the general orders for the evening. The Student Association meets every Tuesday at 6pm, in Lanigan 106. All meetings are open to the public and students are encouraged to attend to express any opinions or concerns they may have.
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Funnelle Hall’s Renovations
Located in the heart of campus, just steps away from the Marano Campus Center and Cooper Fitness and Dining, lies the nine floor building Funnelle Hall.
Built in 1965, Funnelle is home to over 400 SUNY Oswego students.
SUNY Oswego announced they will be doing major renovations to the building, starting at the beginning of the Spring 2020 semester. Students living in Funnelle Hall will need to relocate once construction is started.
Renovations will be finished for the 2020 Fall semester.
According to Funnelle Hall RA Charlie Chapman, he doesn’t see the construction being an issue for students.
“I don’t think it will be too hard on them. They’ll probably just move out, they’ll probably have the same roommate. They’ll just be somewhere else, depending on where they have classes it might be a further walk but it should be fine,” said Chapman.
Student Jason Lin has aspirations about what the renovations will consist of.
“I think for Funnelle Hall they should renovate the kitchen area, and the lounges to make them more modern and more spacious for people to hang out in,” said Lin.
For the students moving to new dorms, once the renovations are done they will likely be able to relocate back to Funnelle, and enjoy its updates.
This project is expected to be a great improvement for SUNY Oswego, and will surely put the “fun” in Funnelle.
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Oswego’s Unusual Winter
Winter may not be over yet, but just by looking around you would think it ended weeks ago. The few signs that remain of winter slowly melted away last week as temperatures soared into the 40’s. According to Dr. Scott Steiger the local co-op observer for the National Weather Service, we’ve only received forty-nine point one inches of snow as of February 29th.
An alarming seven feet below the average snowfall for this time of year. Though it’s not surprising that we’ve seen so little snowfall, through the winter months Oswego ran 2.9 degrees above average temperature-wise. January saw the worst of the effects of the warm winter at an amazing 6 degrees above average.
Students, either way, have taken advantage of the spring-like conditions and have used the time to spend their days outside. While others were left waiting for the snow that never came like Florida native Bruno Rojas. Bruno had this to say about the past winter in Oswego “There weren’t that many lake effect events in Oswego so you never really got to see…big snow storms, where you could just sit down you know in the snow and just kind of watch the really big snowflakes kind of fall really gracefully. ”
Many have expressed similar views, asking constantly where was winter this year? The answer? There was a strong Arctic Oscillation or AO, that was in its positive phase. When it’s in a positive phase we oftentimes see a lot of the cold air trapped up in Canada. It’s when it enters its negative phase that it starts to allow the colder air to funnel down into the United States. and that’s what allows for those cold Oswego winters that we all know.
While this was certainly an anomalous winter, it is part of a longer-term trend of winter warming across upstate New York. The trend becomes obvious on this chart from climate central, showing how Syracuse’s average winter temperatures have warmed 2.8° since 1970. While this chart is only for Syracuse, the changes can be seen all across New York as our climate continues to change.
