CANTON — The St. Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce met Thursday morning to discuss the opportunities for conference tourism in the county.

“We’re responsible for tourism in the county, and tourism promotion specifically,” said Brooke E. Rouse, executive director of the Chamber. “And one of the common strategies in rural tourism is looking at conference tourism.”

Conferences can draw people who might not otherwise come to the area — and hopefully bring them back as visitors later. But the number of people in a given conference may be limited by available facilities.

“We have a feel that conferences of about 100 people are kind of the sweet spot,” Mrs. Rouse said. Among the limiting factors for conferences is that many planners want a space that combines lodging with the conference space. There are three venues in the county that meet this requirement — the Best Western in Canton, the Gran-View in Ogdensburg and the Quality Inn in Massena — and some other venues, including colleges, that have conference space but not housing.

The discussion mainly centered on how to find organizations who might be interested in hosting a conference in the county. Thomas R. Burns, district superintendent of St. Lawrence-Lewis BOCES, suggested county professionals advocating for in-state conferences to be brought up north, while Nicholas J. Maneely from United Helpers suggested trying to bring in hockey groups.

“We have so many rinks in the area,” Mr. Maneely said. “It would make complete sense to hold some kind of hockey thing here.” Mr. Maneely also suggested reaching out to fire and EMS groups about their conferences.

The participants also discussed the possible challenges of conference tourism, including limited dining options and a perception of poor customer service. Mrs. Rouse said that some of the customer service awards being given out in the county were, in part, to improve this situation, while Mr. Maneely suggested the Chamber incentivize companies to require customer service training.

Participants had plenty of positive things to offer about the county, too, though, including the recreation possibilities — fishing, golf and winter sports — and the price.

“The overall cost (of a conference) is going to be a fraction of that at Buffalo or Lake Placid,” Mrs. Rouse said.

The meeting is a first step, and no particular policies were adopted. Members of the focus group will continue working on the issue going forward.

“We do host some regional things,” Mr. Burns said. “I think we just need to put ourselves out there.”

CANTON — SUNY Canton announced its newest four-year degree on Thursday, a Bachelor of Science in cybersecurity, which is new not only to the campus, but to the SUNY system.

“I actually browsed all the programs existing in SUNY system, and I found out .... (at) the bachelor degree level, we don‘t have any campus really offer a bachelor’s of science degree just titled as ‘Cybersecurity,’” said Minhua Wang, a lecturer at SUNY Canton, who helped build the cybersecurity program.

While other SUNY schools may offer network security or computer science with a focus on cybersecurity, Mr. Wang wants to go beyond networks to look at how hackers infiltrate all parts of a computer system — from computer workstations to health care databases and servers for banking websites.

“I feel we have, everywhere we need to have some people who are specializing in security, so I think it’s necessary for us to set up a cybersecurity program,” Mr. Wang said.

The program is designed to teach real world skills to protect companies and keep up to date with the latest security threats.

“Ideally, what I’m looking for is students who want to be on the cutting edge,” said Michael J. Newtown, dean of the Canino School of Engineering Technology, which will house the cybersecurity major.

Mr. Wang has been offering courses in certain elements of cybersecurity — like information security and ethical hacking — for over 12 years, but he sees this major as a way to give students the broad range of skills they need.

To begin with, students will learn how to hack into systems.

“Students in these courses start to realize hacking is somewhat easy,” Mr. Wang said. As they move on from attacking to defending systems, “they realize security is much more difficult.”

Hacking into computer systems takes just one weakness in the target program, while protecting against threats involves trying to find and patch a multitude of possible issues. By beginning with hacking, though, students learn how to recognize how particular kinds of attacks work, and thus how they may be able to counter them.

To do this work, Mr. Newtown says the college plans to create a space were students can hack, corrupt and defend computers without threatening the rest of the school.

“Ideally, we’ll have a room for cybersecurity,” Mr. Newtown said. Before now, “We didn’t have a good way for students to test out things they’ll need to do on the job.”

Among the skills students can learn is cryptography to encrypt data, digital forensics to analyze what hackers have done, and discrete mathematics, which forms the underpinning of many computer security systems.

Students will also take a final course, called cybersecurity body of knowledge.

“All the knowledge you may learn from freshman year, sophomore year and junior year, may get outdated,” Mr. Wang said. “So in the senior course, we offer that course at the end so we summarize the most recent developments of cybersecurity.” Students in the program also learn a systematic approach to keeping up-to-date on developments in cybersecurity after they graduate.

In addition to these computer skills, Mr. Wang also advocates students learning strong communication skills, both written and interpersonal. One of only nine bachelors of science at Canton — as opposed to bachelors of technology — the program encourages students to branch out from computer science, taking English, homeland security, video game design and even history courses.

This will allow graduates to not only understand a wide variety of systems and threats, but also create and communicate coherent cybersecurity policy for any company they end up working for.

“We should probably be scared our students know how to hack into stuff,” Mr. Newtown said. “But everyone from the FBI ... to Target will want people who can hack.”

MASSENA — What was once a furniture and jewelry store in downtown Massena is destined for a brighter future, according to officials who took a tour of the former Slavin’s Furniture building on Thursday afternoon.

When all is said and done in a few months when construction is complete, the 12,000-square-foot building will have 4,000 square feet of retail and office space in the basement, another 4,000 square feet of retail and office space on the first floor, and three apartments on the upper level overlooking the Grasse River on one side and the downtown corridor on the other.

Jason Hoxie, Downtown Massena LLC, is among those working with developer Ricky Hamelin on the reconstruction of the building. He said there will be plenty of windows when completed. The work is being done by Vance Fleury’s Riverrest Enterprises.

“You won’t feel like you’re in a basement,” he said. “It’s in a perfect location. It’s got great views. It’s within walking distance to downtown and hopefully this will jump-start downtown development.”

The building occupied nearly the entire block on Water Street from 1920 to 2000. But after its closing, the village eventually took possession and, in 2010, trustees ordered a portion of it demolished. However, a significant portion of the structure was saved with a plan to eventually develop it.

“A lot of people said we should just tear it down. Someone said the bones of the building are strong,” Massena Mayor Timmy J. Currier said.

“It’s amazing how this building has stood the test of time. I think it’s got great potential,” Sen. Joseph A. Griffo said.

When Mr. Currier took office, he said he considered downtown and the Slavin’s building a priority and began to work with the village’s strategic development team as well as the Downtown Massena LLC to identify funding sources.

“The intent of village leadership back in 2010 was to save and develop this structure. I made this a priority for our team and today we begin to see real progress, which will return this structure to a vibrant part of the downtown core” he said. “The redevelopment of a downtown that has been neglected for years will take time, but I want to assure everyone, this is an absolute priority for our team. Today should demonstrate that through planning, hard work and solid partnerships, we can move Massena forward.”

In May 2013, village officials entered into an agreement with Downtown Massena LLC, which would work to find tenants and redevelop the property to put it back on the tax rolls.

“It took years to plan. We’re here. We’ve got the money and we’re working on it,” Mr. Hoxie said.

“People in Massena care about the community and are willing to put capital in,” Mr. Currier said. “No question this is going to be a great relationship.”

In September 2016, trustees authorized the mayor to apply for Restore New York Community Initiative funds. They received $500,000, which they’re able to apply to the redevelopment of the building.

“You could have said, ‘Somebody else take care of it.’ You’re doing the right projects and you’re getting it done,” Assemblywoman Addie A.E. Jenne said.

Sen. Griffo said local officials identified the challenge and worked together to overcome it.

“We have a lot of challenges, but I think we rise to those challenges. I think one of the things we really do well is work collaboratively together. We identify the challenge and we work together. I look forward to seeing this come to fruition. This kind of project is so important to redevelop the core (of the downtown area). This is something you’ll hopefully look back on with pride,” he said.

Ms. Jenne applauded Mr. Currier for his efforts.

“Kudos to Mayor Currier. He really has been working very hard. There’s just this surge of energy that’s coming out of Massena. The mayor has really has been fantastic to work with,” she said.

She said projects like the revitalization of the Slavin’s building would help bring the hustle and bustle back to downtown and ensure kids and grandkids had a future in Massena.

“When this building gets done, it’s going to be in a place where there’s investment,” Ms. Jenne said.

Sen. Griffo had been through a similar decline while mayor of Rome, and said he understands what village officials are trying to do.

“We need to make every effort to attract commercial investment, create jobs and encourage residential growth in municipalities. One way to do that is to re-utilize existing buildings and properties that aren’t being used to their fullest potential. That is the case here in Massena with the former Slavin’s building. I am hopeful that this project will lead to even more development in the future,” he said.

“Good things are happening downtown, and I can’t wait to return to this building in a few months and see the results. We all know revitalizing our downtowns is not an easy task, but the work here is showing that downtown Massena is heading in the right direction. It’s also important not to forget the work of the business people that have remained on Main Street during the lean time, businesses that have been part of the downtown landscape for decades,” Ms. Jenne said.

OGDENSBURG — The Lions Club Light up the Night Parade is expected to draw hundreds of people to the community on Saturday in what has become an annual ritual officially kicking off the holiday season in Ogdensburg.

Co-sponsored by the Lions Club and the city of Ogdensburg, the parade begins at 6 p.m. Saturday at Ogdensburg Free Academy on State Street and ends at the Dobisky Visitors Center on Riverside Avenue.

Since its inception seven years ago, says Rhonda Roethel, an organizer of the holiday event, the annual parade has continued to grow in both scope and enthusiasm.

“When we took it over it was just a small five-minute parade on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon at 2 o’clock and it went from Hamilton Park down to City Hall,” Ms. Roethel said. “They had a fire truck, maybe a police car and Santa Claus. Now the parade is about an hour long, which is good because we don’t want it any longer than that, because the kids start to get antsy when they get cold.”

Changes over the years have included not just the size of the holiday parade — which will include over 50 entries this year — but also the parade route through the heart of the city.

“We have changed it (the route) over the years,” Ms. Roethel said. “The first time we started it from the Boys and Girls Club parking lot to City Hall and then it moved down Ford Street for a couple of years. Finally, we moved it to State Street because it’s wider, it’s better lit and we have more room to gather at the school.”

The move to State Street in recent years has also helped improve the popularity of the event, according to Ms. Roethel.

“People love the idea of a night parade with the lights, and everything lit up,” she said. “You can pretty much see from one end of State Street to the other and when you look up and down, you see all of the Christmas lights. People love it and tell me that the Light up the Night parade has now become a tradition with their families.”

Saturday’s Christmas parade begins at 6 p.m. in Ogdensburg. Participants will begin lining up at Ogdensburg Free Academy at 5 p.m.

At the end of the parade route, Santa will meet with children at the Dobisky Visitors Center. Hot chocolate and cookies will be available and presents will be given out.

“When they come down to see Santa my own company will have a drawing for prizes and I sponsor prizes to give to kids that come,” Ms. Roethel said. They come to see Santa, enter their name, and then we draw for prizes.”

In anticipation of Saturday’s parade and visit by Santa, the Ogdensburg Parks and Recreation Department will be placing a special mailbox outside the Dobisky Visitors Center, 100 Riverside Ave., so children can write their letters to Santa and drop them off after the parade.

Children and parents are reminded to include a return address to receive a response from Santa Claus.

The mailbox will be there until Dec. 20.

It will be a weekend filled with rain, high winds and, potentially, lots of lake effect snow.

A storm system is expected to reach the area in the early hours of Saturday morning, bringing steady winds and rain that will continue into Sunday. Wind speeds in the Watertown area will be around 18 miles per hour Saturday morning, and that will increase as the day goes on, according to meteorologists with the National Weather Service in Buffalo.

The wind will be accompanied by rainfall anywhere between a third of an inch to three quarters of an inch. Temperatures will be in the high 40s throughout the day Saturday.

A lake shore flood warning was also in effect until 7 a.m. today because of high winds.

But once the system passes, temperatures will drop to the mid-30s, raising the odds for significant lake effect snow as the cold air passes over warm water in Lake Ontario.

Because it’s still a few days out, meteorologists are cautious in saying the snow is a sure thing.

“Anything could happen — you just don’t know until that event gets closer,” said National Weather Service Meteorologist Aaron Reynolds.

If there is lake effect, Mr. Reynolds said that higher elevations in the Tug Hill region could get hit hard this weekend and into next week. Some forecasters say parts of southern Jefferson County could get as much as 2 to 3 inches of snow per hour with blizzard conditions impairing visibility.

Another cold front will also hit the area later on the week, which could create snowy conditions for holiday travel.

Weather forecasters are advising drivers to be cautious on Interstates 81 and 90 this weekend and early next week as traffic increases for Thanksgiving.

However, AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski noted that it’s too early to tell which local communities will get hit hardest, depending on the direction the most intense winds blow.

St. Lawrence County could also see some snow. Some snow is expected Saturday morning before turning to rain in the afternoon.

On Sunday, there would be a mix of rain and snow as temperatures fluctuate in the mid- to high 30s. Winds will be around 21 miles per hour, with some gusts reaching 36 miles per hour.

Snow accumulation in some parts of St. Lawrence County over the weekend could be anywhere between 1 to 3 inches.

LOWVILLE — A wireless internet provider is seeking the help of town officials in its quest to secure tower sites and blanket Lewis County with high-speed internet service by the end of next year.

“We’re going to be working directly with you,” Mohawk Networks interim CEO Allyson M. Doctor told town leaders from throughout the county at a meeting here Wednesday evening. “It’s a very large project. We’re building critical infrastructure for the future.”

North Country Broadband, a division of Mohawk Networks, Hogansburg, last year installed several fixed wireless internet transmitters near the top of Lewis County emergency towers in Lowville and Harrisville as a pilot program. This spring, the company was awarded $6.4 million through the state’s New NY Broadband Program to bolster its expansion efforts in Lewis County.

Under that program, the company is required to offer internet speeds of at least 25 mbps for downloads and five mbps for uploads to all of its potential customers, said Kevin Tucker, network engineer at Mohawk.

The project, which must be completed by the end of 2018, is to bring high-speed service to unserved households throughout the county, Ms. Doctor said.

Mohawk needs to secure 60 to 70 towers for the project, some of them base station towers connected to the Development Authority of the North Country fiber optics network and many others repeater towers to relay the signal, company officials said.

Officials from the county and Mohawk Networks have been holding conference calls every other week, and the company intends to have transmission equipment on all nine county radio towers. The county has provided space on its towers to North Country Broadband at no cost during the trial period; however, starting in 2018, the company is to pay $1 per month for each customer served by each tower, plus provide other items to the county like half the cost to plow the tower sites and internet service as a backup to the county system.

Mohawk plans to soon begin putting equipment on existing towers, starting with new equipment higher on the Harrisville tower to increase its range, Mr. Tucker said.

However, 50 to 61 more towers will likely need to be erected next year to meet company’s goals, and Mohawk officials hope town officials will connect them with landowners who may be willing to allow 180- to 199-foot-tall towers to be placed on their properties, he said.

“You know your area,” Mr. Tucker said. “You know your towns.”

Over the winter, the intent is to secure letters of interest from landowners in all needed locations, he said.

“There’s no obligation to anybody,” Mr. Tucker said.

The goal would be to identify two different properties per tower site in case one doesn’t pass muster during the state Environmental Quality Review and site plan approval process, he said.

Once approvals are received, the company would enter 25-year lease agreements that would pay out $2,400 per year and provide complimentary internet service to all participating landowners, Mr. Tucker said.

Town officials will also be asked to help landowners determine if there are any land-tax implications for tower erection, he said.

Following a half-hour presentation, five Mohawk Networks representatives — Ms. Doctor, Mr. Tucker, business/project development manager Brenna Susice, sales engineer Ryan Thompson and marketing supervisor Claudia Tarbell — gave town officials the opportunity to talk with them individually. Each member of the quintet has been assigned to three or four towns apiece so town officials will all have single points of contact.

LOWVILLE — Lowville town officials will allow the Number Three Wind project to have part of its transmission line overhead — just not the roughly two-mile portion in a residential area.

Councilmen by a 5-0 vote Thursday granted a zoning waiver allowing an overhead line from the proposed wind farm’s switchyard down to Route 26; however, they required that the section between Route 26 and Route 812 be buried to address visual concerns raised by East Road residents at hearings held both last month and Thursday morning.

“Everyone knows it’s going to look like an extension cord across the valley,” East Road resident Jeff Schwan said.

Invenergy Wind North America, based in Chicago, is proposing 35 to 50 turbines in the towns of Lowville and Harrisburg, with a 115-kilovolt substation to tie into the power grid proposed on farmland owned by Earl Nolt off Route 812 just northeast of the village of Lowville. A 4.5-mile power line is to connect the substation and switchyard, and Invenergy — in a letter seeking several waivers to the town’s wind law — asked that a town requirement that power transmission lines be “located underground to the maximum extent possible” be lifted. Requiring the whole line to be underground likely would add $10 million to $15 million to project costs, the letter states.

Marguerite Wells from Invenergy said she had hoped to have a series of visual representations to show what the proposed line would look like, but they had not been completed yet.

Councilmen also approved the following wind law waivers:

n A section limiting wind towers to areas of the town that are 1,400 feet above sea level or higher, as 16 of 20 turbines proposed in Lowville would be between 1,200 and 1,400 feet.

n A requirement that transmission facilities be located in AG and OC zones, since portions of the transmission line are also proposed in CB, CB-R, R30-A and I-2 zones.

n A requirement that building setbacks on towers be 1.5 times their height for a single turbine planned to be 650 feet from a hunting camp; the owner signed off on the waiver.

n A prohibition from putting advertising signs on “any part of the wind energy facility” to ensure a company sign could be put on an operations and maintenance building off Number Three Road.

n A requirement that fencing be placed around towers or groups of towers.

Ms. Wells again reported she has been meeting regularly with Fort Drum officials over concerns about additional turbines in the area negatively impacting radar and remains hopeful continued dialogue will lead to technical fixes so the towers and base may co-exist. While the issue has sometimes been framed as either-or, “in our view, it’s a both-and,” she said.

Brian Ashley, executive director of the Fort Drum Regional Liaison Organization, said his agency is not opposed to wind power but is concerned about anything that could negatively impact “the largest economic driver in the north country.

“Our overriding concern is the integrity and impacts on Fort Drum,” he said.

Nicholas Astafan, the town’s dog control officer, on Thursday also provided board members with some ideas for updating the town’s dangerous dog law. Mr. Astafan said he recently dealt with a situation where one dog killed another on Park Avenue, and, while the family ended up voluntarily having the dog euthanized, updating town law would make things easier if another situation like it were to arise, he said.

“I think we should have a little more bite in our ordinance,” Mr. Astafan said, requesting that councilmen and the town attorney review the proposal.

BELLEVILLE — In a Thursday press release, the Belleville-Henderson Central School District Board of Education announced it would not enter a contract with any of its superintendent finalist candidates.

Thousands Islands High School Principal Joseph J. Gilfus, Red Creek High School Principal David S. Hamilton and Clifton-Fine Central School District Superintendent Regina C. Yeo were all selected as finalists by the school board earlier this month.

The board’s press release said that “in order to make sure we find exactly the right leader for the district, the Board will reconsider its options and re-open the search process for another round of recruitment and interviews.”

The decision will “allow the Board and community to continue searching for exactly the right district leader.”

Interim Superintendent Jane A. Collins will continue to lead the district during the new search process. She was appointed in July after Rick T. Moore accepted a position with the Olean City School District in Cattaraugus County.

The following north country undergraduate and graduate students at SUNY Potsdam recently received scholarships:

Adams

Jessica Worthington, childhood/early childhood education, Carbary Scholarship and the Class of 1953 Scholarship

Adams Center

Stacy Cross, business administration, Joseph G. Nestich Scholarship

Gregory Gilligan, biology, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Dylan Widrick, business administration, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Alexandria Bay

Conner Cummings, business administration, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Adam Hoover, sociology, Noreen M. Canfield Scholarship and University Police/Criminal Justice Endowed Award

Gabrielle Slate, childhood/early childhood education, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Christopher Strough, history, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Antwerp

Fernando Manriquez-Valenzuela, exploratory / undeclared, SUNY Empire Scholarship

Beaver Falls

Nicholas Sundberg, music education, Presidential Scholar Award and Kathleen M. Sipher Memorial Scholarship

Belleville

Sara Dick, criminal justice studies, Leadership Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Black River

Tessa Tanner, childhood/early childhood education, Marlene Alexander Klein Scholarship

Jordan Wilson, criminal justice studies, Leadership Scholarship, Alumni Promise Scholarship, Penny Thompson Barshied Memorial Scholarship and Presidential Scholar Award

Joshua Wilson, music education, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship, Alumni Promise Scholarship, Anna Ashwood Collins ‘67 & Susan L. Morrison Scholars Fund and Leadership Scholarship

Brasher Falls

Riley Barton, biology, Alumni Promise Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Madeline Derouchie, music business, Alumni Promise Scholarship, The Oscar Cohen Memorial Scholarship, Presidential Scholar Award and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Jenna Kesner, exploratory / undeclared, Alfred & Fadwa Aseel Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Shane Rose, childhood/early childhood education, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Brownville

Jordan Cloonan, business administration, Alumni Promise Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Alexis Currier, childhood/early childhood education, Susan H. Dierks ‘75 Scholarship for Early Childhood Education and SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Canton

Emiley Berger, childhood/early childhood education, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Janet Beaudin, childhood/early childhood education, Leadership Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Macenzie Berry, student initiated inter-departmental, Alumni Promise Scholarship, Leadership Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Cianna Bishop, psychology, Kathleen Friery & Bill Ritter Internship Scholarship and Bernadine Howe Scholarship

Melinda Davis, childhood education, Florence M. Dowd Scholarship

Emily Cambridge, social studies 5-12 education, Alfred W. Santway Award

Meghan Conklin, social studies middle & secondary education, Alumni Promise Scholarship, Leadership Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Emily Dean, biology, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Sarahanne Jackson, biology, Darlene Kerr-Niagara Mohawk Scholarship, North Country Merwin Scholarship and Presidential Scholar Award

Bailey King, childhood/early childhood education, SeaComm Scholarship

Samantha Mace, mathematics, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Hannah Marcellus, early childhood/childhood education, J. Stuart Hobkirk Memorial Award

Taylor Prosper, music education, North Country Newell Scholarship

Kendyll Stevenson, early childhood/childhood education, Alumni Promise Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Cape Vincent

Katelyn Docteur, childhood/early childhood education, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Carthage

Mary Bracy, literacy, Winton H. Buddington Reading Scholarship

Darwin Cooley, childhood education, Dorothy B. Carpenter ‘34 Memorial Scholarship

Rachel Ellingsworth, childhood/early childhood education, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship and Weatherup-Holland Teachers Scholarship

Sierra Hamilton, business administration, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Christy McCombs, business administration, Elite Honors Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Mark Petrie, org performance & tech, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Caleb Reid, music education, Alumni Promise Scholarship, Elite Honors Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Caitlin Stepanek, childhood/early childhood education, Vernice Ives Church ‘61 Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Castorland

Aaron Turck, psychology, Leadership Scholarship and the SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Clayton

Nicole Gokey, business administration, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Colton

Brooke Collins, visual arts, Dial Scholarship

Sara Guiney, psychology, Lambert-Eagle Endowed Internship Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Sabrina Johnson, music performance, Frackenpohl Honors Brass Quintet Award and Watkins Fund Scholarship

Tanner Wilson, mathematics, Mt. Emmons Scholarship, Mt. Emmons Board Scholarship and Mt. Emmons Room Scholarship

Croghan

Alexandra Davis, mathematics, North Country Newell Scholarship

DeKalb Junction

Cameron Hance, music education, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Sabrina Wood, art studio, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Dexter

Cayla O’Connor, biology secondary education, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Gillian Seale, theatre, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Ryan Ward, business administration, Elite Honors Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Edwards

Brooke Fenton, English middle & secondary education, Gary and Deborah Hind Scholarship

Courtney Trudeau, childhood/early childhood education, Barrington Scholarship

Evans Mills

Jacob Wilkins, business administration, Alumni Promise Scholarship, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship and Leadership Scholarship

Felts Mills

Shelby Gill, biology, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Fort Covington

Brittany Van Tassel, childhood/early childhood education, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship and Peter and Tina Santimaw Radding Scholarship

Gouverneur

Alexandra Bosse, biology, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Brianna Bush, psychology, Milton & Judith Lowell Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Tyler Daniels, engineering, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Andromeda Elliott, music education, Betty Jane Paro Golding Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Bridget Hall, music education, Anna Pease Breaky Scholarship

Tori Hartle, criminal justice studies, Alumni Promise Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Alyssa Jenkins, criminal justice studies, Ellen Hughey Reynolds ‘76 Endowed Internship

Ahmed Ladan, biology, Leonard-Sipher Scholarship

Madison Miller, biology, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Nichole Ward, criminal justice studies, Presidential Scholar Award and SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Hammond

Kaitlyn Wilson, English & creative writing, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Hannawa Falls

Zoe Loveless, dance, Fishbeck Foundation Scholarship

Harrisville

Elizabeth Arnold, biochemistry, Darlene Kerr-Niagara Mohawk Scholarship

Hunter Fowler, childhood/early childhood education, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Anisa Hotaling, biology secondary education, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Alec House-Baillargeon, music education, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Emory Matott, visual arts, William J. Amoriell Scholarship

Amber Rounds, archaeological studies, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Henderson

Kristin VanBrocklin, business administration, Elite Honors Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Hermon

Crystal Dean, art education, D. Allen Edrington Scholarship

Bailey Durham, exploratory / undeclared, Robert & Katherine Briggs Scholarship and Shelly Electric Scholarship

Sebastian Durham, computer science, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Troy Lucas, exploratory / undeclared, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Heuvelton

Gabrielle Johnson, English middle and secondary education, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Alexis Michael, anthropology, Barrington Scholarship

Mikayla Pike, dance, Dorf Applied Learning Award

Victoria Scott, exploratory / undeclared, Alumni Promise Scholarship, Leadership Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Andrew Streeter, criminal justice studies, SUNY Empire Scholarship

LaFargeville

Christianne Gray, biology secondary education, General Scholarship, Ruth Johnson ‘35 and James Walter Scott Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Grad Scholarship

Lisbon

Kaela Erwin, biology, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Samantha Gladle, community health, Susan Cancilla Witkowski ‘79 Endowed Internship Scholarship

Megan Kent, biology 7-12 education, Alfred W. Santway Award

Bridgett Oshier, sociology, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Lowville

Sarah Gerow, literacy, SUNY Potsdam Grad Scholarship

Elizabeth Kelly, music education, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Rachel Pridell, exploratory / undeclared, Dorf Applied Learning Award and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Madrid

Joshua Barkley, music, Curtis S. Bailey and Irma B. Bailey Memorial Scholarship, Crane Youth Music Schaberg Scholarship and Giroux Honors Jazz Combo Award

Emily Pelkey, psychology, Shelly Electric Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Josh Reed, exploratory / undeclared, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Alexis Wells, biology, Presidential Scholar Award and the Alumni Promise Scholarship

Mannsville

Amy Johnson, business administration, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Massena

Jennifer Beaudoin, art education, Watkins Fund Scholarship

Chase Cameron, chemistry, Alumni Promise Scholarship, Elite Honors Scholarship, Enbridge St. Lawrence Gas Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Kyleigh Dailey, psychology, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Shauna DuBray, sociology, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Allison Fountain, curriculum & instruction, Alfred W. Santway Award and SUNY Potsdam Grad Scholarship

Wendi Gavigan, sociology, Quentin Reutershan Memorial Scholarship

Jenelle Gilmer, exploratory / undeclared, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Sydney Gunnip, visual arts, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Cashlynn Jaggers, art education, Evans-Cummings ‘83 Scholarship, Charles Fowler Arts Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Gerard Jemison, special education, Lorraine Mader Bryner Memorial Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Grad Scholarship

Lexi Kennedy, biology, Mt. Emmons Scholarship, Mt. Emmons Board Scholarship and Mt. Emmons Room Scholarship

Shelby Kennedy, childhood/early childhood education, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Bailey LaBarge, business administration, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Makenzie LaBrake, early childhood/childhood education, Watkins Fund Scholarship

Abbie Lashomb, exploratory / undeclared, Watkins Fund Scholarship

Madeleine Mailhot, environmental studies, Alumni Promise Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Dia MacKay, Spanish, Leadership Scholarship and the SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Courtney Patterson, community health, SUNY Potsdam Grad Scholarship

Natalie Pesold, English & creative writing, Marian Lee Frazier, Class of 1940, and Lulu M. Lee Scholarship for School of Education & Professional Studies

Allison Richards, business administration, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Sophia Rusaw, childhood/early childhood education, Harry F. Brooks ‘68 North Country Educator Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Makayla Szarka, art education, Alumni Promise Scholarship

Morristown

Bailey Holmes, music performance, Milton & Judith Lowell Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Natural Bridge

Rachel Buskey, biology, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Norfolk

Hannah Babcock, exploratory / undeclared, Ellen F. Smith Memorial Scholarship

Leanne Greene, biology, KeyBank Scholarship

Rebecca Hasenauer, visual arts, North Country Newell Scholarship

Caitlin Layaw, exploratory / undeclared, Alumni Promise Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Emily Lemen, social studies middle & secondary education, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Brandon Short, engineering, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

North Lawrence

Ashley Cayea, childhood/early childhood education, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Leanne Gardner, childhood/early childhood education, Gary and Deborah Hind Scholarship

Zaine Roberts, sociology, Watkins Fund Scholarship

Norwood

Eleanor Burns, music education, Presidential Scholar Award and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Brandi Delosh, exploratory / undeclared, Donald Eaton ‘71 Scholarship, Elite Honors Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Kylee Deon, childhood/early childhood education, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Anna Dickinson, exercise science, Alumni Promise Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

May Haas, English literature, Alumni Promise Scholarship

Alayna Reed, exploratory / undeclared, Watkins Fund Scholarship

Abigail Tessier, art education, McCall Family Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Ogdensburg

Jadienne Averill, psychology, Renzi Brothers Scholarship

Ashley Barr, childhood/early childhood education, William H. Flynn Teacher Preparation Scholarship

Dakota Brady, exploratory / undeclared, Lougheed Scholar Grant

Makayla Cruikshank, biology, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Jesse Gleason, politics, Richard J. Del Guidice Scholarship and Rebecca R. Pratt Scholarship for Excellence in Politics

Adam Kelley, business economics, North Country Newell Scholarship

Alison Kimble, childhood/early childhood education, Michael C. Handley ‘09 Memorial Scholarship

Ruthanne Middlemiss, biology, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Nolan Rishe, environmental studies, Lougheed Scholar Grant

Evan Robinson, environmental studies, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Colin Ross, biology, Foundation Honors Scholarship

Emily Switzer, childhood education, Alfred W. Santway Award and SUNY Potsdam Grad Scholarship

Meghan Vollmer, psychology, Alumni Promise Scholarship and the Watkins Fund Scholarship

Oswegatchie

Brenden Davey, chemistry, Tony Peterson Memorial Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Philadelphia

Kayla Barbarito, business administration, Barrington Scholarship

Matthew King, environmental studies, Thomas and Elizabeth Omohundro Environmental Studies Scholarship

Julia Nieves Soto, childhood education, Michele Christy Memorial Scholarship

Plessis

Bailey Rogers, childhood/early childhood education, Osceola Harvey Hill Memorial Scholarship

Potsdam

Jaime Aliffi, visual arts, Karleen Brown Jones ‘56 School of Education Scholarship

Shannon Boyle, music performance, Curtis S. Bailey and Irma B. Bailey Memorial Scholarship, Barrington Scholarship, Crane Youth Music Schaberg Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Megan Burke, childhood education, General Scholarship

Caylee Chin, exploratory / undeclared, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Daniel Clark, theatre, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Andrea Crow, special education, Lorraine Mader Bryner Memorial Scholarship and General Scholarship

Tessa Fields, childhood education, Dorothy B. Carpenter ‘34 Memorial Scholarship

Amy Goldberg, literacy, Alfred W. Santway Award

Michael Jadlos, speech communication, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Ivan Jukic, music business, Mt. Emmons Scholarship, Mt. Emmons Board Scholarship and Mt. Emmons Room Scholarship

Malcom Kane, music education, Alumni Promise Scholarship

Kelsea Kreider, psychology, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Kasey LeManquais, biology, North Country Newell Scholarship

Alyssa Martin, business economics, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

William Murphy, social studies 5-12 education, KeyBank Scholarship

Andrew Norrell, biology, St. Lawrence River Patrons of the Arts/Art Scholarship

Deana Renwick, biology 7-12 education, Ruth Johnson ‘35 and James Walter Scott Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Grad Scholarship

Joseph Santantasio, computer science, Vasily Cateforis Scholarship, Charlie Smith Math Scholarship and Scholarship for Excellence in the Study of Advanced Mathematics (ESAM)

Kelsey Sixberry, English middle & secondary education, Eva Strait-Dean Award and the SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Rory Sixberry, English middle & secondary education, Elite Honors Scholarship, Evelyn Timerman Kelsey Memorial Scholarship and Sheldon Scholarship

Ashley Stay, art studio, Annual Internship Award, Katya Czerepak Greer Memorial Scholarship and Eola Pitz Memorial Scholarship

Nicholas Tate, music education K-12, Helen Snell Cheel Scholarship and Crane School of Music Recruitment Scholarship

Molly Tishberg, creative writing, Class of 1977 Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Paula White, history, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Redwood

Sadie Moran, business administration, Elite Honors Scholarship and Osceola Harvey Hill Memorial Scholarship

Lindsey Paranzino, business administration, General Scholarship

Rensselaer Falls

Jennifer Wilcox, childhood/early childhood education, Kathleen Strobeck Fales ‘44 and Allen R. Fales Scholarship\

Richville

Ryan Shippee, psychology, Watkins Fund Scholarship

Rodman

Rachel Rudd, psychology, Dr. Poeliu Dai Scholarship and the SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Sackets Harbor

Riley Nans, graphic design & new media, Alumni Promise Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Nicholas Neddo, criminal justice studies, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

St. Regis Falls

Carrie Bailey, exploratory / undeclared, Renzi Brothers Scholarship

Macy Fraser, exercise science, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Caleb Green, exercise science, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Saranac Lake

Shami Wells, social studies 5-12 education, Ruth Johnson ‘35 and James Walter Scott Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Grad Scholarship

Star Lake

David Law II, curriculum & instruction, Kenneth H. Campbell Scholarship and Evans-Cummings ‘83 Scholarship

South Colton

Scott Boyce, international studies, Noreen M. Canfield Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Theresa

Logan Drake, biology secondary education, Compeau-Fournier Scholarship, Jessie J. McNall Scholarship, Renzi Brothers Scholarship, Ruth Johnson ‘35 and James Walter Scott Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Renee McAllister, inclusive & special education, SUNY Potsdam Grad Scholarship

Caroline Pracht, art education, Noreen M. Canfield Scholarship and the Watkins Fund Scholarship

Three Mile Bay

Chelsea Malloy, psychology, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Waddington

Kristine Demeter, community health, SUNY Potsdam and Canton-Potsdam Hospital Health Coach Program

Watertown

Marc Augliano, business administration, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Amiere Bell, theatre, Betty and Merton Evans Scholarship and Presidential Scholar Award

Miranda Brenon, childhood education, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Christian Conway, graphic design & new media, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Mark Corey, politics, Alumni Promise Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Ryan Ellingsworth, music education, Alumni Promise Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Bryce Fazio, criminal justice studies, Leadership Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Katrina Fontaine, childhood education, SUNY Potsdam Grad Scholarship and William H. and Margaret B. Cullen Scholarship

Cole James, criminal justice studies, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Patrick Lafary, English literature, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Allison Medley, exploratory / undeclared, SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

Danielle Morrow, business administration, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Madison Sebella, business administration, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Brooke Sholette, curriculum & instruction, Krista Fordham ‘08 Masters in Education Scholarship

Samuel Wilson, environmental studies, SUNY Potsdam Transfer Scholarship

Erik Wollum, Earth science 7-12 education, SUNY Potsdam Grad Scholarship

Winthrop

Colby Cyrus, French, Kathleen Friery & Bill Ritter Internship Scholarship

Kelsey Newtown, social studies 5-12 education, Robert & Katherine Briggs Scholarship and SUNY Potsdam Freshman Scholarship

CANTON — Dozens of residents gathered here Thursday night for a brainstorming session that gave them a chance to offer their ideas about how to make Canton a more vibrant community well into the future.

Equipped with sticky notes and colored markers, people wrote down their thoughts and affixed them to large display boards. Categories ranged from economic development and infrastructure to recreation and housing.

Paula Jenson-Moulton, a Miner Street Road resident, was among about 50 people who attended the public workshop.

Residents had a chance to share their thoughts on a large scope of issues including housing, transportation, agriculture, commerce, recreational and cultural opportunities and more. Input was also gathered on how to improve Taylor Park, the community’s beach and picnic area on Miner Street Road.

“I’m here because I care about Canton,” Ms. Jenson-Moulton said as she jotted down her ideas. “I’d like to see more small office space available. I’d like to see a more vibrant downtown.”

Mike Scriminger, a local musician, said he’d like the community to offer a music venue, such as an amphitheater. He also believes there should be a detour off Main Street to alleviate traffic congestion downtown.

Abby Warner and Liz Christy, both seniors at Canton’s Hugh C. Williams High, said a recreation center for teenagers is needed. Other people suggested a YMCA facility that could offer programming for all ages.

“Besides hockey games in the winter, there’s not really a place for kids to go to hang out,” Miss Warner said.

Miss Christy said Canton needs more shopping choices.

The public workshop is part of a year-long process that started in September to update Canton’s existing comprehensive plan. The original plan dates back to 1968 and has been periodically updated since then.

An 11-member planning committee, co-chaired by village trustee Carol Pynchon and Town Councilman James Smith, meets monthly to work on the comprehensive plan.

The firm MJ Engineering & Land Surveying , Clifton Park, was hired by Canton officials to help develop the plan and prepare the updated written document.

The written document is supposed to serve as a road map for the future of the town of Canton and its two villages, Canton and Rensselaer Falls. The updated document is supposed to be finished next September.

President Donald Trump took aim at longtime critic Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., on Thursday night, after Franken was accused of forcibly kissing and groping a woman 11 years ago.

“The Al Frankenstein picture is really bad, speaks a thousand words,” Trump tweeted, adding in a second tweet that Franken had last week been “lecturing anyone who would listen about sexual harassment and respect for women.”

Los Angeles radio anchor Leeann Tweeden said that during a USO trip to the Middle East and Afghanistan in 2006 Franken forced his tongue in her mouth during a rehearsal for a skit and then groped her while she was sleeping during a flight home - a moment that was captured in a photograph.

“You knew exactly what you were doing,” she wrote in an online essay published Thursday morning. “You forcibly kissed me without my consent, grabbed my breasts while I was sleeping and had someone take a photo of you doing it, knowing I would see it later and be ashamed.”

Some responded to Trump’s tweets by citing the allegations against the president.

Ezra Klein tweeted “Trump has more than a dozen, on-the-record, allegations of sexual assault against him, and was caught on tape bragging about committing sexual assault. This is a dangerous game for him to play.”

Daniel W. Drezner tweeted “So true. Can you imagine if he’d said something on an audiotape about grabbing part of a woman’s anatomy?”

Eleven women came forward during Trump’s presidential campaign to accuse him of sexual misconduct over several decades.

Trump has dismissed these claims as “fake news,” and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has said that all the women who have accused Trump of sexual harassment are lying.

Hours before Trump tweeted about Franken, Sanders told reporters that Trump did not plan to rescind his endorsement of Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused by several women of sexual misconduct.

“The president believes that these allegations are very troubling and should be taken seriously, and he thinks that the people of Alabama should make the decision on who their next senator should be,” Sanders told reporters at a briefing.

Moore has dismissing calls from GOP leaders to end his Senate campaign after The Washington Post reported allegations that he initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl when he was 32.

Trump has not mentioned Moore in public comments and tweets, and has ignored reporters’ questions about the allegations.

A “Lesley Stahl tape” Trump mentioned in his second tweet refers to a New York Magazine story about a “Saturday Night Live” writers discussion where Franken suggests a joke about raping Leslie Stahl, a “60 Minutes” correspondent.

Franken is quoted in New York Magazine as saying: “And, ‘I give the pills to Lesley Stahl. Then, when Lesley’s passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her.’ Or, ‘That’s why you never see Lesley until February.’ Or, ‘When she passes out, I put her in various positions and take pictures of her.’ “

Accusations of Franken’s misconduct come two days after a candid hearing in Washington, during which female lawmakers said sexual harassment is a pervasive problem on Capitol Hill.

Last week, the Senate unanimously approved a bill that mandates sexual harassment training for all senators and their staffs.

After initially issuing a brief apology for his behavior, Franken released a lengthier statement expressing contrition.

“I’m sorry,” said the senator, who skipped a series of votes Thursday. “I respect women. I don’t respect men who don’t. And the fact that my own actions have given people a good reason to doubt that makes me feel ashamed.”

Tweeden said she accepted Franken’s apology.

“Yes, people make mistakes, and, of course, he knew he made a mistake,” she said at a news conference in Los Angeles, where she works as a news anchor for the radio station KABC. She said she would leave any disciplinary action up to Senate leaders and was not calling for Franken to step down. “That’s up to them. I’m not demanding that.”

Franken’s alleged misconduct occurred not long after he had moved home to Minnesota from New York, and was already positioning himself to run for Senate in 2008, a race that he narrowly won after a recount.

Franken has made numerous statements in support of women who experience sexual misconduct and has worked on legislation to support sexual assault accusers.

After the New York Times reported decades of sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein, Franken posted on Facebook that Weinstein’s behavior is “far too common.” And he called the women sharing #MeToo stories about sexual assault, harassment and other misconduct “courageous.”

Franken tweeted “The women who have shared their stories about Harvey Weinstein over the last few days are incredibly brave. . . .”

Franken tweeted “Thx to courageous ppl who’ve shared #MeToo stories, incl. @SenatorHeitkamp, @maziehirono, @clairecmc, & @SenWarren”

After Tweeden’s accusations, Franken faced bipartisan calls for an ethics investigation.

“Sexual harassment is never acceptable and must not be tolerated,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, N.Y., said in a statement.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said Thursday that Bill Clinton should have resigned the presidency after having a relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, the most prominent liberal to weigh in as the issue has moved from conservative media to a wider chorus of voices in recent days.

Gillibrand said she thought it would have been “the appropriate response,” when asked if Clinton should have stepped down by a reporter. The comments were published Thursday by the New York Times.

Attention on Clinton’s treatment of women - most of the allegations are well over 20 years old - was resurrected by some conservative media outlets during the presidential campaign after the “Access Hollywood” tape emerged showing Donald Trump bragging about grabbing women. Trump later brought some of Clinton’s accusers to a presidential debate.

In recent weeks, unreported sexual misconduct and harassment allegations have been brought against figures in Hollywood, media, technology and politics, on all sides of the political spectrum.

Last week, after a Washington Post report detailed an accusation that Alabama’s Republican Senate hopeful, Roy Moore, initiated sexual contact with a 14-year-old decades before, some liberal commentators returned to Clinton’s behavior, spurred by what many said was a sense of responsibility in the wake of a national discussion about sexual aggression, harassment and assault committed by powerful men.

“The Democratic Party needs to make its own reckoning of the way it protected Bill Clinton,” Caitlin Flanagan wrote in The Atlantic . “The party needs to come to terms with the fact that it was so enraptured by their brilliant, Big Dog president and his stunning string of progressive accomplishments that it abandoned some of its central principles. The party was on the wrong side of history, and there are consequences for that.”

Matt Iglesisas, a correspondent at Vox, laid out a detailed 2,200 word argument outlining the reasons Clinton should have resigned. “Had he resigned in shame, we all might have made a collective cultural and political decision that a person caught leveraging power over women in inappropriate ways ought to be fired,” he wrote. “Instead, we lost nearly two decades.”

Fox News has noticed the outpouring of liberal hand-wringing about the Clintons. “The left turns on Bill Clinton, Biden over behavior toward women,” read a headline this week.

Occasional Trump adviser and conservative media host Sean Hannity called Clinton the left’s “favorite accused rapist and serial philanderer,” and surmised that the reckoning was potentially a cynical ploy “to look consistent when they go after Roy Moore, whose alleged transgressions pale in comparison.”

Many conservative sites have focused coverage on sexual misconduct scandals by liberal celebrities and figures while downplaying controversies surrounding Trump and those on the right: the day that the first charges were announced in special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, sites like New York Post and Infowars focused on accusations against the actor Kevin Spacey, for example.

On Thursday, Breitbart’s homepage was dominated by headlines that played up the allegations about Democratic Sen. Al Franken, which had been disclosed earlier in the day. Multiple stories the site published about Roy Moore sought to sow doubt about the accusations against him.

The Fox story pinpointed the Clinton pivot to a tweet by MSNBC host Chris Hayes, who last Friday wrote that “as gross and cynical and hypocritical as the right’s ‘What about Bill Clinton’ stuff is, it’s also true that Democrats and the center left are overdue for a real reckoning with the allegations against him.’ “

Gillibrand said that she felt the context had changed since Clinton was in office.

“Things have changed today, and I think under those circumstances there should be a very different reaction,” she said. “And I think in light of this conversation, we should have a very different conversation about President Trump, and a very different conversation about allegations against him.”

“Can you get to 35 Oxford immediately, please? 35 Oxford. Some people have been shot.”

The 911 call to the Dayton Police Department on Aug. 10, 2016, then suddenly cut off, only to be followed by a second call.

“Please hurry,” the caller said. “Please. Please Please. Please.”

Neighbors would later say they then heard as many as 10 shots.

The next thing they saw, police told the Dayton Daily News, was a man “casually” leaving the house.

Inside the Oxford Avenue house, they found three people shot, later identified as Tammy Cox, 53; her son, Michael Cox, 25; and her boyfriend, Jasper Taylor, 74. One was already dead. The others died shortly afterward.

A triple killing was startling enough in Dayton. The news that soon emerged - suggesting that it could have been prevented - made it more than another multiple murder. The man was mentally ill and knew it, according to court documents. He knew he had the potential to commit violence and indeed, was desperately attempting to obtain medication to protect himself and others, from harm.

A few hours before the shootings, it turned out, Muhammad Shabazz Ali, agitated and hallucinating, had been at two different mental health facilities seeking a refill for his medications, among them Risperdal, an antipsychotic medication, and Prozac, an antidepressant. At one of them, according to frantic 911 calls from the scene, he was throwing chairs and raiding the pharmacy, screaming “I want my medications. I want my medications.” Police arrived and transported him to a second facility, Grandview Medical Center.

Despite a police assessment there that he posed a “grave” and “imminent” danger to himself and others, especially to his ex-girlfriend, he was allowed to leave.

He showed up later that day at the at the home of the ex-girlfriend, Tammy Cox, on Oxford Avenue.

By the time police were called to that address, the imminent danger had become a grim reality.

Ten minutes after the shootings, Ali returned to one of the mental health facilities, the Day-Mont Behavioral Center, with a handgun, pursued by police, who took him into custody there.

Ali, 62, was indicted on 29 counts - including six for aggravated murder - for the three shooting deaths. He has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

Could it have been stopped? Why didn’t the man get his medication for which he was pleading? Do the health care facilities that allowed him to leave bear some responsibility? These questions are now the subject of a wrongful-death lawsuit pending in Ohio’s Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas.

The suit, brought by survivors of those killed, claims the behavioral center and a social worker wrongfully discharged Ali.

Among other things, the lawsuit alleges, they failed to appreciate how dangerous Ali was. They failed, for example, to flag Ali’s 1988 conviction for voluntary manslaughter and the more than 20 years in prison he served for the fatal stabbing of his girlfriend, Angela Richardson, who was eight months pregnant with his child. Ali was released from prison in 2009.

The lawsuit alleges that mental health care workers acted negligently by failing to properly examine, diagnose, treat and medicate Ali. These actions, the lawsuit claims, allowed Ali to “inflict the injuries, harm and damages to the plaintiffs.”

The families of the victims are suing “to make sure that this doesn’t happen to any other family,” their lawyer, Michael Wright, said in an interview with The Washington Post.

“This was very easily preventable,” Wright said. “Had they given Mr. Ali his medication, had they properly evaluated him, then these deaths wouldn’t have occurred.”

“This could have been caught multiple times and it just wasn’t,” he added.

Grandview Medical Center, one of the defendants in the amended lawsuit, declined to comment on the allegations when reached by The Washington Post.

Elizabeth Long, a spokeswoman for Kettering Health Network, which oversees Grandview, told The Post: “Unfortunately, due to patient privacy rights and pending litigation, we are unable to share any information at this time.”

Last year, Long told the Dayton Daily News that a person’s criminal history is not used to determine whether they are mentally ill. She said Ohio law requires that a person brought to a hospital for a mental evaluation be examined within 24 hours.

After that examination, she said, “if the chief clinical officer believes that the person is not a mentally ill person subject to hospitalization by court order, the chief clinical officer shall release or discharge the person immediately unless a court has issued a temporary order of detention.”

Day-Mont, another defendant in the lawsuit, did not respond to requests for comment from The Post.

But last year, a Day-Mont attorney said, “Day-Mont denies that it was negligent, or that any treatment or care provided in its facility causally resulted in any harm or death to any other third party,” the Dayton Daily News reported.

In its written answers to previous versions of the complaint filed in court, both Day-Mont and Grandview denied the allegations and argued they could not be held legally responsible for Ali’s actions.

According to the suit, when Ali appeared agitated and violent at the Day-Mont Behavioral Health Center, unable to obtain his medications, police were called.

When police arrived, they gave him a “pink-slip” indicating he needed a mental health evaluation and took him to Grandview for emergency inpatient treatment, where staff noted that he was acting aggressively and hearing voices.

But the hospital staff decided not to admit Ali. The social worker did not believe he met the criteria for treatment. In her consultation note, the social worker reported, incorrectly, that Ali had no assault history, which the lawsuit called a “blatantly reckless false statement.”

“She ignored facts of harm to himself in the records and as reported by the police,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit suggests that Ali himself had been warning people that he was dangerous since his release from prison in 2009.

He had told a number of case managers and psychiatrists at Day-Mont about his conviction and violent outbursts, according to the suit.

In March 2009, he told a psychiatrist that he harbored resentful and retaliatory thoughts about someone from his past. But no one took efforts to identify the person or people Ali was referring to, according to the lawsuit.

The following year, he told his case manager he feared he would get involved in another violent domestic dispute. This was also not reported to police. Medical personnel made no attempts to send Ali to involuntary inpatient treatment, the suit alleges.

The lawsuit, which includes extensive details about Ali’s medical history, claims these records were not kept properly.

The suit says mental health professionals could have warned “identifiable victims” of the potential threat to their lives but failed to do so.

And, it alleges, he pleaded for help in the form of medication the month before the shootings. In July 2016, Ali met with his case manager, telling him he ran out of his psychiatric medication. The manager urged him to reschedule a missed doctor appointment so he could get his prescription refilled.

But, the lawsuit claims, the manager “failed to get Ali’s prescriptions filled through communications with the psychiatrist on duty at that time.” He was “aware of the absolute need for Ali to receive his medications regularly and his violent propensities to himself and others without it.”

On Aug. 8, Ali saw the case manager at Day-Mont and told him he could not wait any longer for his medication to be refilled. Two days later, Ali showed up at Day-Mont without a scheduled appointment and requested his medications immediately.

“Day-Mont had a duty to prescribe the medications to Ali which would have protected the Plaintiffs and prevented the harm,” the lawsuit states. A nurse reported that she heard Ali call Tammy Cox over the phone.

Then the social worker at Grandview determined Ali didn’t fit the criteria for inpatient treatment. The psychiatrist on duty did not independently evaluate Ali, according to court records.

Ali was discharged “without anyone bothering to ascertain if he had transportation or other means of getting home, and with no documented follow-up plan,” the suit says.

“Thereupon, Ali got into his truck and drove to the home of Tammy Cox,” according to the lawsuit. He “used a gun he possessed on his person, or in his truck” and “battered, shot” and killed them.”

Having a dog can bring a lot of love into your life. It could also make it last a little longer.

A group of academics from Uppsala University in Sweden analyzed the health records of 3.4 million people in that northern European country, where databases contain detailed information on most everyone’s hospitalizations, medical history and even whether they own a dog. Such detailed records made it relatively easy to suss out the impact of having a canine companion.

The results were heartwarming.

People in possession of a pooch were less likely to have cardiovascular disease or die from any cause during the 12 years covered by the study, according to the study published in Scientific Reports. The impact was greatest for single people, said Mwenya Mubanga, an author of the paper from the university’s Department of Medical Sciences and the Science for Life Laboratory.

“Dog ownership was especially prominent as a protective factor in persons living alone, which is a group reported previously to be at higher risk of cardiovascular disease and death,” Mubanga said. “Perhaps a dog may stand in as an important family member in the single households.”

The researchers examined seven national databases in Sweden, including two that track dog ownership, and focused on people aged 40 to 80. Single dog-owning adults who lived alone were 11 percent less likely to subsequently develop heart disease and 33 percent less likely to die than non-dog owners, the analysis found. Hunting dogs seemed to offer the most protection when it came to staying alive.

It’s not clear exactly how the dogs helped avert heart disease, or whether getting one directly led to better health, cautioned Tove Fall, the senior author of the paper and associate professor in epidemiology at Uppsala University. It’s possible that dog owners are healthier and more active before they get a canine companion, she said.

“We know that dog owners in general have a higher level of physical activity, which could be one explanation to the observed results,” Fall said. “Other explanations include an increased well-being and social contacts or effects of the dog on the bacterial microbiome in the owner.”

Either way, maybe an extra treat for that doting Lab waiting at home is in order.

CARTHAGE — At a Board of Education meeting last month, Carthage Central School District officials said the school would be phased out of receiving a certain type of Impact Aid over the coming years.

Federal Impact Aid is meant to compensate local educational agencies for the expense of educating federally connected children, including those whose families are in the military, because the presence of federal activities can both increase the number of students and decrease the local property tax base.

Aid for heavily impacted districts — defined as those whose population is at least 45 percent military connected — was estimated by the school superintendent at around $9.5 million in the 2016-17 school year.

That same year, the district received just short of $16 million in Impact Aid. Impact Aid made up 23 percent of total aid received. The Heavy Impact aid made up about 59 percent of overall Impact Aid that year.

“Because the enrollment of our military-connected students has gone down, we were put on notice that the Heavy Impact Aid will be transitioned out,” said Superintendent Peter J. Turner.

In 2018-19, the district would receive 90 percent of its current Heavy Impact Aid; 85 percent by 2019-20; 80 percent by 2020-21; and be completely phased out by 2021-22.

Documents from the October school board meeting indicated that 44.7 percent of the student population was connected to the military.

Districts are required to meet the 45 percent threshold for two consecutive years in order to receive the Heavy Impact Aid.

“We have a plan for just that sort of reason, if the wheels happen to fall off the bus,” Mr. Turner said. “We developed them over the last five years, mostly by following the comptroller’s recommendations from our most recent audit.”

The most recent audit was conducted between July 2012 and January 2014 and released in August 2014.

Mr. Turner said that by following the comptroller’s recommendations, the district was able to pay off much of its debt. It also currently purchases buses with cash rather than bonds.

“Because it’ll be phased out over the course of three years, we can plan around it,” Mr. Turner said. “It’s like any other slow enrollment decline because you have that time to adjust.”

Carthage Central School District’s enrollment has gone through periods of increasing and decreasing enrollment in quick succession, but began to steadily decline in 2012-13. State data from 2015-16 indicated that 3,247 were enrolled in the district.

The word has gone forth that a “reckoning” is due. Democrats are preparing to come to terms with Bill Clinton’s sexual transgressions. Sort of. Depending on what you mean by “reckoning.”

Last week, in a conversation with a male Democratic consultant about the extraordinary wave of sexual harassment allegations — or, more accurately, the reaction to those allegations — shaking American culture, it seemed as if some sort of grappling with the sordid side of Clinton’s history was inevitable. Clinton is 71 years old. His wife has run her last race. There is nothing he can do for Democrats now in return for their continued silence about a sleazy past.

Some ambitious Democratic politician, we agreed, might even perceive long-term benefit in lambasting the former president for his sins. Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, for example, seized the opportunity this week, saying Clinton should have resigned from the presidency.

Just about everyone seems to recognize that at least some of the allegations leveled against Clinton over the decades were too credible to be dismissed. Paula Jones was cynically manipulated by right-wing operatives. But, c’mon, something must’ve happened in that hotel room where she said Clinton exposed himself.

In The New York Times, liberal columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote a column this week titled “I believe Juanita,” referring to Juanita Broaddrick, a woman who accused Clinton of rape. In the Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg denounced “moral sickness in the service of partisanship.” She was referring specifically to the partisan hacks — shout-out to Ann Coulter! — justifying Roy Moore’s Senate campaign in Alabama. But she meant the Democrats who explained away Clinton’s behavior as well.

Younger liberal men such as MSNBC host Chris Hayes and Vox writer Matthew Yglesias were on board with the Kill Bill vibe, too. It seemed like a consensus was in the works to disinter Clinton’s presidency, let out a collective hiss and then bury it all over again with an ugly new epitaph.

But if the conversations I had this week with a few Democratic women in their 50s and 60s are any indication, not everyone’s ready for the funeral.

These are women who worked for sexual equality and abortion rights. Women who in the 1990s or since had worked in powerful positions in Democratic politics and government. None was willing to talk on the record. None was ready to cut Clinton loose from the party that they had given decades of their lives to. Each was ambivalent in her own way.

In the most striking conversation, an extraordinarily accomplished professional recalled Clinton as a philanderer. She sighed over Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky. But she had completely, conveniently, forgotten the non-consensual parts of the Clinton saga.

Another woman of forceful opinions, forcefully expressed, hemmed and hawed uncharacteristically. She spoke of her anger at the awkward, impossible position in which Clinton had placed his liberal supporters during the Lewinsky scandal. And she talked about forgiveness – not reckoning.

Another circled around the chessboard without ever landing on a square. “This is going to churn for a while,” she said. “I don’t know that there will be a spotlight moment on Bill Clinton. But I do believe the portrait of him will change.”

That seems like a good guess. But watching devoted Democrats rationalize the past does put the sight of Alabama Republicans rationalizing the present in context. White Christians in Alabama are busy triangulating the basis of their vote for skeevy Roy Moore, just as last year they rationalized their support for skeevy Donald Trump. No doubt they would prefer an honest senator who didn’t molest teenagers. But they’re going to the culture war with the candidate they’ve got, not the candidate they wish they had.

Democrats in the 1990s did the same, albeit with a man, unlike Moore, who had intellectual and political gifts that paid dividends for the whole nation. Democrats are now responding to far less serious accusations against Senator Al Franken by pushing him into the equivalent of purgatory — an ethics committee investigation. If things work out, and no other credible accusations are made, he may very well keep his seat.

In New York, Jonathan Chait wrote of Moore’s candidacy: “It’s easy to feel superior about this when opposition to grotesque treatment of teenage girls lines up neatly with your own party’s well-being.”

The awkward truth is that the nation’s politics are balanced on a needle right now. Otherwise decent people will tolerate the intolerable, the indecent, even the criminal for the chance to nudge the world ever so slightly in their direction.

In one sense, with Harvey Weinsteins on the way down, women are on the rise. Surely that’s the pulse of the moment, and the long-term trend. But with a groping sexist in the White House, and Republican men running Congress, women are also vulnerable in the short term.

A Clinton reckoning — whatever that means — will likely come in some form. But it may have to wait until the world shifts further toward the more equitable balance that Clinton himself, for all his grim faults, sought to bring forth.

——

Francis Wilkinson writes editorials on politics and U.S. domestic policy for Bloomberg View. He was executive editor of the Week. He was previously a national affairs writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist. Readers may email him at fwilkinson@bloomberg.net.

CHICAGO — The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. revealed in a statement Friday that he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

The 76-year-old civil rights leader said he had found it difficult to perform routine tasks and after a battery of tests was diagnosed by his physicians with Parkinson’s, a disease that ailed his father.

“My family and I began to notice changes about three years ago. For a while, I resisted interrupting my work to visit a doctor. But as my daily physical struggles intensified I could no longer ignore the symptoms, so I acquiesced,” he said in a statement.

Northwestern Medicine also released a statement saying Jackson was diagnosed with the disease in 2015 and that they had been treating him in an outpatient setting. Northwestern described Parkinson’s as a “progressive degenerative disorder that results from loss of cells in various parts of the brain that control movement.”

Jackson said in his statement that grappling with the disease has been difficult.

“Recognition of the effects of this disease on me has been painful, and I have been slow to grasp the gravity of it. For me, a Parkinson’s diagnosis is not a stop sign but rather a signal that I must make lifestyle changes and dedicate myself to physical therapy in hopes of slowing the disease’s progression.”

In Jackson’s statement, he thanked family and friends for their support and said he views the diagnosis as an opportunity to be vocal in the need to find a cure.

“I will need your prayers and graceful understanding as I undertake this new challenge,” the statement said.

The FBI released data this week that showed a continuing rise in hate crimes across the country in 2016, with 6,121 total incidents, compared to the 5,850 reported the year before. There was a 19 percent rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes — the largest jump against any group — since the previous year, which also saw a precipitous rise.

But the data are also misleading. There are so many gaping holes in the data that it is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain the true scope of bias-related crimes in America.

To start with, it’s impossible to conclude that hate crimes are being prosecuted on a large scale. The FBI’s data set is composed of crimes that state-level agencies have determined meet the federal definition of a hate crime. But that doesn’t mean they were charged as such, and in most cases, they’re not, with prosecutors either failing to identify bias in the motive or choosing to rest their case on simpler charges such as assault and vandalism.

Hate crime statutes also vary from state to state and don’t exist at all in Wyoming, Indiana, Arkansas, Georgia and South Carolina. And the FBI’s data set includes no notation of how many of the 6,121 incidents last year resulted in arrests or specific hate crimes charges.

It’s also impossible to say where most hate crimes are being committed. FBI data shows roughly half the hate crimes in the country occur in just six states: California, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Massachusetts and Washington. You might think that California, the location of 931 hate crimes last year — more than any other state, according to the FBI — is the worst place to be black, gay or Muslim. But that would be the wrong conclusion, says Brian Levin, a criminologist and attorney who has spent 31 years studying hate crimes. It just means California is better than most other states at reporting hate crimes.

Hate crime reporting varies widely by state. The statistics compiled by the FBI each year depend on thousands of U.S. law enforcement agencies voluntarily submitting their data to their state’s uniform crime reporting agency, which then categorize the crimes — deciding, for example, what crimes meet the federal hate crime definition. Those state agencies then voluntarily submit their data to the FBI.

In California, less than 30 percent of law enforcement agencies submitted data last year. In Massachusetts, which Levin considers one of the most thorough states when it comes to reporting hate crimes, less than a quarter of the agencies submitted.

Then you have Hawaii, which submitted no data. In Arkansas, Pennsylvania and New Mexico, only 1 percent of law enforcement agencies sent in their hate crimes statistics. More than 80 U.S. cities with more than 100,000 residents either reported no hate crimes or simply ignored the FBI’s request for data. The result is a compilation of numbers that is startlingly arbitrary.

“We have a variety of states that are just not meaningfully participating,” said Levin, who heads the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino.

Some of the states with the highest percentages of African-American residents — such as Mississippi and Alabama — reported very low numbers of hate crimes, even though half the hate crimes reported last year by the FBI targeted African-Americans. That’s an indication that the data is skewed, Levin said.

Meanwhile, “Massachusetts has the highest per capita rate of hate crimes — which doesn’t mean they’re all haters,” he added. “It means they’re paying attention.”

It’s not just law enforcement agencies that are under-reporting the problem, experts say. It’s also the victims.

Minority groups, particularly recent immigrants, often fail to report being victims of hate crimes for a variety of reasons, ranging from fear and mistrust of the police to language barriers and poor understanding of the laws.

“If you’re an immigrant from an undemocratic nation where the police are not to be trusted, you would never call the police,” said Michael Lieberman, the Washington counsel for the Anti-Defamation League.

Conversely, Lieberman said, American Jews, who are predominantly white and have better trust in the police, are fairly good at reporting hate crimes — 53 percent of the religiously motivated hate crimes identified in 2016 targeted Jews.

Civil rights activists say some minority groups, including blacks, Muslims and undocumented immigrants, are additionally nervous about going to the police due to a history of police discrimination and abuse.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said they received reports of some 540 incidents of harassment of Muslims by law enforcement officials in 2016 alone; a statistic they tally alongside hate crimes and other forms of discrimination.

A Pew Research Center survey of Muslims this year found that 6 percent said they had been threatened or attacked for being Muslim — a vastly larger number than those incidents reported by the FBI, even with the 19 percent rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes last year and the 66 percent jump in anti-Muslim hate crimes the year before.

Critically, the fact that the FBI is tallying something as a hate crime in its annual report does not actually mean that the incident was charged as such — it just means that the incident meets the federal government’s definition.

More often than not, police and prosecutors decide not to charge incidents as hate crimes, Levin said. For one, it is hard to prove a hate crime. While convictions for other crimes like murder, vandalism or theft require only evidence that the suspect committed the act, a hate crime conviction requires proof of motive — a specific, discriminatory motive.

“Hate crimes are specific intent crimes, which means the motivation has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and that is really hard,” Levin said. “Even in San Francisco, where they prosecute these crimes as hate crimes, juries are often reticent to convict on a hate crimes charge.”

It’s also often easier just to skip the hate crime charge, particularly if the crime is severe enough that prosecutors will be able to ask for the maximum penalty without it.

For example, Craig Hicks, who allegedly killed three Muslim college students at their apartment complex in 2015, is not being charged with a hate crime. The 1998 torture and beating death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Wyoming, was never tried as a hate crime. Nor was the gruesome killing of James Byrd by white supremacists in Texas the same year.

There is also a fair amount of confusion and a lack of meaningful law enforcement training on how to identify a hate crime and what to do about it.

The racial epithet targeting a black Vermont high school student and spray-painted across the school’s football field last summer initially resulted in a felony charge of unlawful mischief because, as the police chief Trevor Whipple explained, according to the Burlington Free Press: The hate crime law “applies to an individual, a crime against a person, and in this case we have a crime against an object, that being the field, and the victim being the school district.”

Nearly two months later, the federal prosecutor added a hate crime charge.

Often, as in the case of Maan Khalsa, a Sikh man who was attacked last year in Richmond, Calif., it takes public pressure to get the charge. Khalsa, 41, was assaulted by two men who reached through his car window, punched him repeatedly and injured him with a knife before also cutting off his hair, which Khalsa had kept long as religiously mandated. In Khalsa’s words, it was “one of the most humiliating things anyone can do to a Sikh.”

Yet the district prosecutor was initially reluctant to charge Khalsa’s attackers with a hate crime, said Charles Jung, president of the California Asian-Pacific Bar Association. But the charge was added after Jung’s organization and the Sikh Coalition wrote up a demand letter and issued a news release.

“I think from the trial lawyer’s perspective, if you’re trying to prove a case, the simpler the better. If you add complicating factors, I suspect the worry is you’re going to confuse the jury,” Jung said.

But the groups targeted by hate crimes want to see them branded as such, and they have good reason he added.

“It’s important to recognize the violence that these kind of hateful acts do against an entire community and not just an individual. It recognizes the broad impact of this act,” Jung said.

Such charges, as well as the reporting of incidents that meet the hate crime definition but are not charged as such, sends a message to victims that they’ll get help if they report a crime, experts say. And for that reason, civil rights advocates have been pushing states to do more — like implement a mandatory reporting system — to get the data out there.

“Data collection is a real barometer of overall response,” Levin said. “The bottom line is we need training and modern policies, and you need executive leadership with someone saying this is important.”

WASHINGTON — The White House asked Congress on Friday for $44 billion in additional relief from this year’s devastating hurricanes but urged lawmakers to make spending cuts to offset disaster costs that are now approaching $100 billion.

The White House request for more disaster relief after the hurricanes, Harvey, Irma and Maria, set up a possible confrontation over whether Congress must find spending cuts to pay for relief even as President Donald Trump pushes for as much as $1.5 trillion in tax cuts over a decade.

White House officials suggested a raft of cuts to pay for the relief, including $23 million from worker-training grants originally funded by the 2009 stimulus law, $730 million from the Army Corps of Engineers’ operations, maintenance, flood control and coastal emergencies funds, $196 million from the Department of Agriculture’s rural economic development program, and $72 million from the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The State Department’s Democracy Fund would lose $99 million and the Department of Transportation highway aid to states would lose $1 billion.

Rep. Nita M. Lowey of New York, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, immediately rebuked the White House over its requests to offset the funding.

“Just one day after pushing the House to pass a massive tax cut for corporations and the wealthy that would add $1.5 trillion to the debt, it is galling that the administration is requesting offsets in exchange for helping Americans rebuild their lives,” Lowey said in a statement. “Holding vital recovery funding hostage to unrelated and often divisive spending debates is wrong, and only delays fulfillment of our obligation to help disaster victims.”

Republicans have been conspicuously quiet about their concerns over adding to the ballooning national debt. The deficit for the 2017 fiscal year totaled $666 billion, an increase of $80 billion from the previous year.

Citing the extent of the damage in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, Lowey said that the White House’s relief request “does not come close to what local officials say is needed.”

A leading Republican lawmaker was also quick to criticize the request as insufficient. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said Thursday night that his staff had advised him that the coming request was “wholly inadequate.”

“After the outpouring of sympathy and the expressions of concern that we’ve heard from the highest levels here in Washington, D.C., we’ve continually been told to wait, wait, wait,” Cornyn said.

ITHACA — The Watertown High School 200-yard freestyle relay placed 36th out of 53 squads in preliminaries Friday as area north country teams finished out of the qualifying at the state girls swimming meet at Ithaca College.

Watertown’s relay of Sarah Kilburn, Hailey Alvarado, Emily Alvarado and Brooke Peters finished with a time of 1 minute, 41.82 seconds at the campus’ Aquatics Pavilion.

Swimmers from Canton, Gouverneur and St. Lawrence Central also competed in swim preliminaries Friday with the best showing coming from Canton sophomore Isabella Jaskowski in the 100 backstroke with a time of 1:00.56 for 42nd out of 64 swimmers.