Tom Magnarelli

Updated at 7:00 a.m. Wednesday

Syracuse University officials have taken a noticeably tougher stance against protests by #NotAgainSU, a group of students that says the administration hasn't done enough to address racist and anti-Semitic incidents on campus in the last few months.

This is the third year a SUNY Oswego professor is collecting holiday cards, hand written by students and other volunteers, for kids who lost family members to mass shootings across the country. 

Will Johnson, a senior political science major at SUNY Oswego checks off the names on a list of 74 children impacted by shootings in Las Vegas, Parkland and Aurora. Scattered across a table are colorful Christmas cards with images of winter scenes. 

Syracuse University student protesters walked out of classes Thursday, demanding the resignations of the chancellor, public safety chief and others. Protesters said they do not have confidence in those officials to carry out the changes they said are needed, after racist graffiti, vandalism and other incidents occurred on campus last month. 

Syracuse University Chancellor Kent Syverud has responded to a list of demands from a student sit-in that has been going on for a week, over racist incidents that have occurred recently on campus. In the past two weeks, SU has been rocked by at least 10 incidents including racist graffiti, yelling racial slurs and hateful emails. 

New York State Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins celebrated 100 years of women gaining the right to vote in the U.S. during Women’s Day at the New York State Fair. 

Hochul noted the suffrage movement started with a women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls in 1848. Women won the right to vote in New York, two years before women’s suffrage was passed by Congress in 1919. Hochul questioned how women would be judged 100 years from now.

The New York State Department of Labor does safety inspections for all 72 rides at the New York State Fair, and continues inspections each day of the fair. Fairgoers can also check to make sure a ride is safe. 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo took an Amtrak train from Albany to the New York State Fair for its opening day on Wednesday. Some of the highlights of Cuomo’s trip includes a new plan to make the fairgrounds energy self-sufficient by 2023. 

Cuomo and cabinet officials arrived via train to highlight what Cuomo calls an affordable and environmentally-friendly alternative to get to the fair from Buffalo or Albany.

“It’s a greener way of doing it and there’s also a financial incentive, because if you take the Amtrak train you’ll have free admission,” Cuomo said.

Former Holocaust refugees and their families were among the speakers at an event honoring the 75^th anniversary of nearly 1,000 refugees arriving from Europe to Fort Ontario in Oswego during World War II. Fort Ontario was the only emergency shelter for victims of the Holocaust in the United States. 

Rep. Tom Reed (R-Corning) hosted U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in Geneva, Wednesday, for a roundtable discussion with local farmers. Trade deals, China and labor were highlights of the conversation.

Dick Kimball, a dairy farmer in Chautauqua County, said tariffs imposed by other countries on U.S. dairy products, over ongoing trade disputes, have hurt his prices.

“We might even have lost some market share, because other countries have gone in and fill the void,” Kimball said.