“Underappreciated, taken for granted, our bulletin boards defiled, our phones ringing at 3:00 am, yet I wouldn’t trade this job for anything else.”

That is how one Resident Assistant, RA for short, described her job to me.  Ithaca College employs about 120 students to serve as RAs, each responsible for the overall supervision of 15 to 50 fellow students (more in the College Circles apartment complex). 

Being an RA is a great leadership experience, beginning with the formal training during which one RA reported to me that she learned about “every situation imaginable, [and was plied with] resources, phone numbers, and handbooks.”  RAs describe the challenge of quickly getting to know 30 or more fellow students – not just their names and faces but also their personalities and how to create a “fun, educational, safe, and comfortable living environment in the res halls.”  Cultivating a cohesive culture in which everyone feels at home can be a challenge in team and community building that leaves RAs more confident and outgoing as a result of seeing what they are able to accomplish.  One RA, an international student, told me he has learned to identify and be an early responder to students who are depressed or beginning to seclude themselves.  Another described the satisfaction of helping a first year student, whose high-functioning autism left him socially awkward, make friends and become a valued part of the floor.

RAs can anticipate some tasks like creating a sense of community on their floor, but other challenges have to be responded to on the fly.  One RA this fall heard a fire alarm go off just as he stepped out of the shower and into his room wearing only a towel.  His duty was clear: to make sure all the residents made their way quickly outside. Did he have time to get fully dry and to dress?  Our intrepid RA put duty first, and led the way outside wearing only some very moist shorts.

Sooner or later, RAs may face a more serious crisis.  One told me that in her first semester on the job there was a sudden pounding on her door in the middle of the afternoon.  A student a few floors up in the East Tower was suffering from a seizure.  The RA raced up the stairs and found a young man lying on the floor with a nasty bruise on his forehead where he had fallen.  His girlfriend was next to him, panicked and not knowing what to do.  The RA got the young man onto his side and called Public Safety, who in turn brought in a medical first responder team. 

What runs through your mind in a moment like that?  Reflecting back, this RA told me of her realization that “these guys who ran around looking for me could easily have been the same guys I wrote up the previous weekend … [for a rules infraction].  Yet here they were coming to me for help with a situation that honestly scared me. …  When I came, things became organized and calm.  We all supported each other to make sure things turned out right.  And they did.”

When I ask RAs about the greatest rewards of their job, they describe the satisfaction of knowing they have made a difference.  The RA who responded to the seizure still exchanges a special smile with the girl she first met sitting on the floor scared there might be something seriously wrong with her boyfriend.  The RA who helped the first year autistic student is now helping him put together a showing of the work he has done in the Park School.  Another RA speaks of the satisfaction of seeing someone on campus who she helped during an especially difficult time in her life two years ago, someone who was then thinking about leaving college but who is now helping others as an RA herself.  Many RAs tell me this is the experience they will most treasure from their undergraduate years, both for the friends they have made and the life lessons they have learned.  

Ever wonder what it would be like to recognized as a leader among your peers?  To have people look to you for answers, and to find out that you are up to the challenge?  Ithaca College is looking right now for a few good women and men to serve as RAs next semester.  To find out more, and to apply to be part of this special group of student leaders, go to http://www.ithaca.edu/reslife/ra/index2.htm.

What holds people together for over half a century in ties of deep affection and mutual respect?  How do bonds between people remain strong even when they are physically scattered and no longer see each other on a regular basis? 

Last weekend I attended a reunion of Ithaca College alumni who played together on the football teams of the late 1950s and early 1960s, organized by John Fasolino '60, Guido Maiolo '59, and Mike Angelo '60.  These gentlemen and their spouses have been getting together regularly for the last forty years, beginning about ten years after their graduation.  Each time they gather, they find new and deeper meaning in their shared academic and athletic journey of fifty years ago. 

This was no mere sentimental journey to the past, though there were certainly a lot of fond remembrances.  The players spent Friday evening whooping and hollering at highlight films of their gridiron exploits.  The needling was merciless when one offensive lineman moved before the snap, but was not caught by the official and ended up leading the way on a touchdown run.  The action on the field looked like the plays a Bomber team would run today, but the facilities left something to be desired back then.  These men recalled showering while still in uniform to rinse off the mud at halftime of a game played in a downpour, and huddling together in the back of a flat bed truck to ward off the late autumn cold on the long ride from the newly-built field on South Hill to the locker rooms in town.  Dick Carmean '60, captain of the 1959 team, told how he and the Cortland football captain decided to buy the jug that still serves as the trophy in the Cortaca Jug game.  Cortland captain Tom Decker – a childhood friend of Carmean’s – conned Dick into paying the full cost of the jug.  Which means that the jug belongs to Ithaca!

But these alumni also gathered for a more serious purpose.  On Saturday morning they stood at the Schenectady grave of their coach, Dick Lyon, along with Coach Lyon's children, Tim Lyon and Kathy Staak, and their families.  Lyon came to Ithaca in 1958 to coach a team that had run through a series of head coaches in the previous decade, that had seen football players leave the program and the school, and that had produced a 2-5 record the year before.  Lyon turned all that around his first year, drawing disgruntled players back to the team and ending the season at 6-1.  Coach Lyon’s teams had winning seasons every year for the next eight years, until he left in 1967 to join the coaching staff at West Point.

Dick Lyon’s winning records, though, were not what brought players back to talk about him.  Dom Pacio '60 was a bruising running back who transferred to IC from Syracuse University, which already had a running back named Jim Brown.  Pacio, who had a huge reputation coming in, watched on the first day of practice as upperclassmen were given low cut cleats to wear – a new style of shoe that everyone wanted.  Coach Lyon gave Dom a pair of high cut cleats.  When Dom asked his coach why he got the high cut shoes, Lyon replied “You have to earn the low cut shoes.”  Dom swallowed his pride and ran onto the field determined to show Coach he deserved the low cut shoes.

Larry Karas '63 worked his way up from the demonstration team in his freshman year (the squad whose job in practice is to mimic the offense and defense of the next opponent) to being the starter at quarterback in his junior year.  A few games into the season Coach Lyon took Larry aside and said “You are always looking at the ground when I talk to you.  I won’t start a quarterback who doesn’t make eye contact and show he is really listening.”  Larry told me it was a watershed moment in his life, and he looked me in the eye as he told me this story.

These teams of the late 1950s included many veterans of the armed services, men who were often married and had young families.  They had little money.  Players with children were often invited to Coach Lyon’s house for Sunday brunch – in some cases the best meal they had all week.  Years after graduating, players would get a call from Coach asking how they were doing, suggesting a coaching job they might want to apply for, and showing concern for their continued development in their careers and as men.  Standing at his grave almost fifty years after graduating, player after player told of the thoughtfulness and the life lessons that Dick and his wife Helen had given them.  If you had to boil those stories down to four words, they would be:  “He changed my life.”

The bonds between Coach Lyon and his players were created because he cared for them, he held them to a strict code of ethics and behavior, and he challenged them to give their best in everything they did.  When the IC Board of Trustees resolved to name the press box in Butterfield Stadium after Coach Lyon, they noted not just his winning records but that he had been “a steadfast mentor, role model and friend to hundreds of students.” 

We have had just two head football coaches in the 42 years since Coach Lyon left Ithaca College, both of them very much in the mold he created.  And we have 23 other varsity coaches at IC who are also described as life changers by their players.  Our sports programs have never been, and will never be, just about sports.