Reported by: Deirdra O’Boyle
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University Police To Enforce Strict Policies On Seatbelt Use
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.
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Oswego Opera Theatre performs “The Mikado”
By Micah Pasinski
OSWEGO, N.Y.– The Oswego Opera Theatre presented a special performance of the Gilbert and Sullivan comedic opera, “The Mikado” on November 11th and 12th. The Mikado was the ninth of fourteen operatic collaborations written between the famous musical duo, Arthur Sullivan and W.S Gilbert. It has remained incredibly popular to this day since it’s 1885 opening in London with many professional theatre companies still performing it.
Gilbert and Sullivan’s comedic opera is a British piece set in Japan. This was done because the creators thought Japan was a far enough place away from their homeland of Britain to give them the freedom to satirize Victorian British politics and institutions of the time, by disguising them as Japanese.
The Oswego Opera Theatre took inspiration from the play’s original satirical nature and used the production as a way in which to poke fun at a lot of what has been dominating our political news lately. They even went so far as to having jokes pertaining to the Trump-Russia Scandal and a character in the show who was strikingly similar in appearance to 2016 Democratic Party Presidential Nominee, Hillary Clinton.
SUNY Oswego Orchestral and Artistic Director, and Conductor of “The Mikado” Dr. Juan Francisco La Manna said that the political aspect is all a part of what makes the show still relevant and enjoyable for audiences to see today.
“The great thing is that it can translate into today’s politics and world very well, so we took probably ninety percent of the substance of the script and adapted it so it would become really relevant,” said La Manna.
“The Mikado” is known as one of the most played musical theatre pieces in history. It was even estimated that before the end of 1885, its premiere year, 150 companies were already producing the opera.
