Oswego State students have a reputation of partying on the weekends and causing trouble in the local community.

Contrary to this belief, some students from the university, led by seniors Denvol Haye and Eli Kim-Swallow, raised $12,134 during their For the Kids event on April 11 at Cheap Seats Sports Bar and Grille. The event is to fundraise for the Child Advocacy Center of Oswego County. This marked the second year of the event.

For the Kids is a great representation of the positives Oswego State students bring to the local community, something that is not always brought up when talking about the students. Haye and Kim-Swallow are members of Delta Kappa Kappa and the men’s ice hockey team, respectively. They brought their two organizations together in order to triple the amount of money raised this year.

The seniors set things up so that their organizations can keep the tradition going next year and hopefully it can grow.

This is just one example of many of Oswego State students doing something positive for the local community. On April 9, students from Donna Steiner’s literary citizenship class helped organize a cash mob at the River’s End Bookstore, where over 100 people came in to make purchases at the store.

These instances prove that Oswego State students are more than just a bunch of hooligans who drink on the weekends and terrorize the local community, despite the recent incident on the lake. On Monday four students from the college ventured out in the waters of Lake Ontario in an inflatable boat. Lacking paddles, they were quickly brought out into the middle of the lake, which had a water temperature of 40 degrees fahrenheit.

A bonehead move by a small group of students should not reflect poorly on the entire population of Oswego State. To sum up the whole population based on foolish actions such as this is narrow-minded. There are about 7,000 undergraduate students and more than 99 percent of them are not represented by an occurrence like this.

Wednesday, April 15, marked the annual Quest day at Oswego State. Though a good number of students made the day about “Questmas,” an annual excuse to drink, many more students gave and attended presentations on a wide variety of topics. Numerous awards were given to students as well. It was a great showcase of the talents of the student body and a reminder of the good things students do at Oswego.

And Oswego State students like these are recognized by the college for their good deeds. Five Lakers were honored with the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence earlier this month for their hard work and dedication during their four years at Oswego State. Next year, five more upstanding students will be recognized.

It’s time for a change when it comes to how we look at this college community. Instead of the drunk college kids, it should be the young men and women preparing themselves to be active citizens in our world. The good things students do matter, because the students doing well will be the ones representing not just Oswego State, but our entire generation in the future.