Over the past academic year, the Oswego State Student Association has proposed and passed several changes to the campus in regards to social justice, as part of President Omar van Reenen’s Laker Justice Agenda.
The goals on van Reenen’s agenda included diversity, inclusivity, sustainability and transparency. The first thing he achieved was appointing a diverse president’s cabinet, consisting of 70% women, 55% people of color and 30% open members of the LGBTQ community.
“I wanted to make sure the cabinet actively represented the student body, so that, when advocating for issues at the heart of Lakers, they are advocating on issues that they understand, that they can find a solution for, to be a better voice for the students,” van Reenen said.
Over the past two semesters, SA passed resolutions to give equal funding opportunities to club sports, extend fitness center hours, hang flags to show support to Palestinian, Iroquois Nation, LGBTQ+ people of color, transgender, black and Pan-African students, provide free menstrual products in public restrooms on campus, outfit University Police with body cameras and remove plastic straws, condiment cups and plastic cups from dining facilities.
After passing the Equal Pay for Equal Play resolution, all men’s and women’s club sports received equal funding, typically giving women’s teams an increase to their budget and taking a chunk out of the men’s teams. The budget process was then changed for the upcoming academic year to make sure the club sports teams receive only what they need and to avoid legacy funding, where a club’s budget is based off what they received in years past.
“On our campus, we cannot flourish if women and men on our campus don’t have equal opportunity,” van Reenen said.
To accommodate students who have busy schedules throughout the day, SA requested for the Cooper and Glimmerglass fitness centers to extend their hours, so gym members could work out later at night. This year the fitness centers piloted this program and added six hours per week to both of the fitness centers’ hours.
Several community members attended an SA meeting to either support or advocate against the request to hang six specific flags when the flags in Marano Campus Center return from cleaning and review. The flags that were debated included the Palestinian flag, the Black Lives Matter flag and the transgender pride flag. The Iroquois Native American tribal flag, Pan-African flag and Philadelphia pride flag, which is the gay pride flag with the addition of a brown and black stripe, passed without debate. Senators voted for each flag individually and each passed by general consensus.
“All students were asking for was to be recognized and made visible, for our underrepresented and marginalized students to know that we stand in solidarity with them and our campus does not only see diversity as a number … but as inclusivity,” van Reenen said.
SA, in collaboration with the Women’s Center, passed and signed in The Women’s Center Period Act: Free and Equal Access to Menstrual Products. Starting in the fall semester, this resolution will provide free tampons and pads to all women’s restrooms, gender-neutral restrooms, and a third of all men’s restrooms on campus. Menstrual dispensary waste bins will also be installed in those restrooms.
To avoid potential discrimination, SA passed the Social Justice Act, which asked for the implementation of body cameras on University Police officers. The body cameras record any interaction the officers have while on duty. This is meant to provide more accurate accounting when reporting an incident.
The issue of plastic use was introduced to the senate last year with Plastic Action for Commitment to Sustainability Affirmation, but was voted down. It called for the restriction and then complete removal of plastic cups in the dining halls.
PACSA was reintroduced this year and students voted on it as a referendum during the presidential and vice presidential election. The referendum passed with 52% voting to remove the plastic cups, 32% voting to keep them and 15% voting to abstain. The effects have already been put in place as dining halls removed them, eliminating more than 324,000 plastic cups per semester.
“We, the students, set the standards for sustainability and we have to understand that fighting for the understanding is hard because it’s a faceless fight,” van Reenen said. “If we can model our campus as a way society can reduce its carbon footprint, then what better way to celebrate our campus as a [leader in] sustainability?”
With the success of some referendums, SA brought them to the SUNY SA conference in Albany to propose their implementation to all 64 SUNY schools in the state. The referendums that were passed include PACSA, Social Justice Act, Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System Reporting Initiative, which gives a public report on each school’s sustainability efforts and accomplishments every two years, the Period Act and the Social Justice Act. These will now be made policy in every SUNY school.
For the remainder of this year, van Reenen is focusing on extending library hours, changing the signage for gender-neutral bathrooms, ensuring Muslim students have access to halal foods and prepared food during the month of Ramadan, taking international students into consideration during career fairs, food waste recovery for food insecure students and reducing the school’s carbon footprint.
Most recently, SA evaluated the school’s contract with Centro and changed it to provide for transportation during summer and winter sessions along with increased hours to the Blue Route and the bus into Syracuse. van Reenen said the transportation fee will not increase even though the contract increased from about $72,000 to about $90,000 because they budget for about $105,000. van Reenen said he will sign the contract next month.
“Now their SA fee will be used to maximum potential and the contract will fulfill its maximum potential to provide a service to our students,” van Reenen said.
Vice President Edward Kelly said one of the accomplishments he is most proud of is revamping the budget process. He said he was originally not in support of changing the budget process last year but has since found it to be necessary.
“It was definitely something that was important to change because there were a lot of issues that went with it, including club sports [budgets] being compliant with Title IX, and making sure that equal opportunity funding was there,” Kelly said.
Kelly was appointed as vice president at the beginning of the academic year when Catherine Millington stepped down from the position after winning the election for VP against Kelly. Next year, Kelly will be Chief Justice for the Supreme Court during his senior year.
“I’ve always been about holding people accountable; that’s one of my values I hold near and dear to my heart,” Kelly said. “I think I’m going to carry that with me to the Chief Justiceship because I think that’s important for the college to hold people accountable for their actions, for us as SA to hold organizations accountable for their actions and for organizations to hold themselves accountable for their actions.”
Kelly said the court is a lesser known branch of SA and wants to work to make it more visible to students as a resource on campus.
SA also made changes to its bylaws, budget proposal policy and contingency fund policy. After the investigation of the presidential election, SA changed its bylaws in regards to campaigning and elections. These changes made it so campaign material only within 20 feet of the official physical polling place needs to be removed, and if a candidate is already an executive, they cannot use their official SA email to campaign.
After a grievance against the presidential election, candidates van Reenen and Baldwin Lawson rescinded their candidacy. Takeena Strachan, the current director of civic engagement and legislative affairs, ran for vice president unopposed, but became president due to the line of succession. Strachan is the first black woman to be SA president at Oswego State.
“It baffles me how women of color are still making monumental changes in society – it’s 2019,” Strachan said. “I think it’s an honor … it shows future generations to come that even in our timeline right now, anything is possible if you put your mind to it and hard work never really ends, but there’s a benefit to working hard in life.”
Strachan said, as president, she hopes to have a cabinet of eight or nine people, maintain student involvement and reach out to different disciplines to get involved. Since she joined, she said she noticed an increase in the variety of students’ topics of interest.
“I really wish we could have done more with parking and more with all of the organizations,” Strachan said. “I would like for everybody to have their own little spotlight.”
Photo by William Rogers | The Oswegonian
