I am sure some of you are thinking that I put the word "naked" in the title of this post as a craven strategy for increasing the readership of my blog. But you may remember the TV crime series called "The Naked City," whose weekly episodes always began with reference to telling just one of the thousand stories in New York.

There are a thousand untold stories on and around the Ithaca College campus on any given day. I'd like to tell three of them, all from a single evening last weekend.

Last Saturday I went to the indoor track & field building on the Cornell campus to offer words of encouragement to over 1100 IC students and a similar number of Cornell students participating in the Relay for Life, a dusk to dawn walk-a-thon to raise money for cancer research.  This collaboration between students at the two institutions is one of the largest college-based fund raisers in the country, having raised nearly $1 million in the five years of its existence.  It was inspiring to see 20 percent of the entire IC student body gathered in one place for a charitable purpose, ready to walk in teams around the track all night long while sending emails to friends and supporters to increase their fund raising totals. 

While at the Relay for Life I was able to congratulate members of the IC singing group Ithacappella on their first place finish in the mid-Atlantic regional a cappella competition. As a result of their victory, they will compete next month for the international championship along with five other groups from the United States, one from Europe and one from Africa. The members of Ithacappella had come to the Relay for Life directly from the regional competition, both to participate in the walk and to provide entertainment sometime during the night. The energy of youth is an awesome thing to behold!

From the Relay for Life I crossed over to the Whalen Center for Music on the Ithaca College campus to attend the fourth annual Gospel Music International Festival. Twelve high schools from the eastern United States sent over 250 students to take part in the festival, with instrumental support from the Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra. Led by Professors Baruch Whitehead and Janet Galván along with several guest conductors, the choirs and the orchestra had less than 24 hours to meld their voices and instruments into an innovative program of gospel music that also included blues, jazz, Nigerian folk song, African American spirituals, and a dash of Handel's Messiah like you've never heard it. Ford Auditorium was transformed from a concert hall to a sanctuary, and the audience became a clapping, swaying congregation.

As I went home for the evening, I thought about the fact that administrators can articulate the vision of a college, but students and faculty are the ones who make it happen. The Relay for Life is organized by students who gain valuable lessons in leadership even as they have fun and do great things for the community. Ithacappella is a student club whose members spur each other to heights of performance that win international acclaim. And the Gospel Music Festival is an example of excellence that comes from a harmonious blend of youthful talent with mature leadership. 

I went to bed Saturday night with my head full of the thousand stories at Ithaca College. My last conscious thought was that the Relay for Life participants would be walking for another five hours.

Naval captains have the authority to marry people.  Governors can commute the sentences of prisoners.  I recently learned that college presidents may, on occasion, issue a pardon.

In the fall of 1983, Blair Woods was an "unofficial sophomore" on the Ithaca College campus.  He was not what one would call a model student.  Blair had not wanted to go to college at all, and came to IC the previous year as a freshman only because his mother told him that if he did not attend he would have to pay her back the $150 deposit she had put down.  After that first year, Blair decided his original instincts were correct and did not plan to return.

Next fall, though, as his friends went back to college, Blair began to waver.  He decided to drive up to Ithaca with his girlfriend from his home in Arkansas, even though the semester had already started and he could not register for classes.  Though Blair was no longer a student, his RA from the previous year landed him access to a storage closet in which he set up what can only be called highly unofficial sleeping arrangements.

Blair and his girlfriend had driven to Ithaca in her father's car, and used it to get around town.  Nothing wrong with that, except that her father was unaware of the fact.  When the pair got into a minor accident in Ithaca, the police investigation turned up the fact that the car had been reported stolen.  Later that day, Blair and his girlfriend received a visit from campus public safety and the Ithaca police.  They were taken off campus and incarcerated while the young woman's father decided whether or not to press charges against his daughter and her boyfriend.  After what seemed like a long delay, he decided not to press charges.  At that point, Blair was taken back to campus and told to sign a letter acknowledging that he was no longer welcome on the IC campus.

A quarter century later, Blair is an independent tour manager of pop and rock bands.   I met him last weekend at the State Theater in downtown Ithaca, in his function as road manager for Joan Baez, who was in town for a concert.  Blair told me his story with a mischievous gleam in his eye that could not have been very different from when he was last on the Ithaca College campus.

Blair asked that his prohibition from campus be lifted.  "Mr. Woods," I asked solemnly, "have you learned anything from your banishment?"  He replied that he is a rehabilitated man, one who recently helped start an inner-city garden cooperative in his adopted home town of Buffalo (http://www.urbanroots.org).  And although he earned a college degree some years later from another university, he would like to think of himself as an Ithaca College alumnus. 

And so it was that I discovered -- or maybe invented -- my presidential power to issue a pardon. 

Blair, welcome back to the Ithaca College campus!  Since access to residence halls is much more controlled today than it was in 1983, I know you will sleep only in approved quarters.  And please drive your own car.