Cornell College hosted a safety fair day on top of the hill Wednesday, Oct. 8.

According to Zach Barett, coordinator of campus safety at Cornell, in years prior, the safety events had been spread over a week on campus, with a different entity visiting each day of the week.

This year, the college decided to truncate that into a single day with numerous entities coming to campus on the same day.

Iowa State Patrol brought their Seat Belt Convincer, where people have the amount of force of a 5 to 10 miles per hour crash experienced by dropping from a height.

Some college students noted it’s the equivalent of a short roller coaster ride, while others were writhing in pain as the seat belt stopped them from hurtling into a metal wall.

The Mount Vernon Fire Department brought the jaws of life tools for college students to get experience in how they cut through metal, by being allowed to chop through older bicycle frames with the tools.

“These are so much heavier than they look,” Lauren Summers said.

Barrett said one of the biggest pieces of information that many agencies were explaining to college students was the newly enacted hands-free law in the state of Iowa.

“Many of our students come from other states, and the laws when it comes to driving may be different there,” Barrett said. “Our goal for many of these agencies is that they know what the laws are here.”

“It’s also a great way for college students to interact with the multiple first responder agencies when they’re not experiencing an emergency,” said Doug Shannon, director of the Cornell College campus safety. “Especially being in contact with the ambulance, fire department and police staff, where we have many Cornell College students volunteer during their time here.”