Three years ago, Pappadia never thought he would be in a position to help someone with their personal fitness. He was set to pursue a career in acting when he began at Ithaca College and even hired an agent to help him land roles in films and theatrical productions. But a change in Pappadia’s lifestyle after his first semester inspired him to make a decision that surprised his peers — he switched his major from acting to occupational therapy.

He wanted to pursue a degree that would lead him to directly help others.

“I really wanted to use theater as a means of positive and physical rehabilitation for others, and I knew I could not do that alone as an acting major,” Pappadia said.

After the fall semester during his freshman year, Pappadia began to show an
interest in personal fitness. He began a new training regimen that included interval weight training and high-intensity aerobic fitness. He also sped up his metabolism by eating six smaller meals a day rather than three large ones.

Pappadia’s efforts to become more active have spread on campus with his new Dubsweat fitness class, which takes place at 6:30 p.m. every Tuesday in the Fitness Center. The 30-minute routine specializes in rigorous interval training and is one of only three aerobic fitness classes categorized as high intensity.

Pappadia said the workouts are based on high movement and flexibility exercises.

“I try to show as many exercises as I can and different techniques so people can take them from my class and incorporate them into workouts two to three times a week,” he said.

Though his older brother was a three-sport athlete in high school and competed for the men’s crew, ice hockey and lacrosse teams, Pappadia spent much more time on the stage than in the gym growing up.

He said it was difficult at times to see his older brother succeed in sports and his sister be an athletic dancer.

“My brother was popular in high school, and I didn’t have a bunch of friends at the time,” he said. “I fell into the theater group, and that gave me some civility in school.”

In some ways, Pappadia’s passion for acting spurred his new affinity for physical activity. He said his agent told him he should change his nutritional and exercise habits so he could fit into more roles.

“They wanted me to slim down so I could be more versatile with separate looks because when you’re overweight you’re only cast into a certain type of part,” he said.

Pappadia said he fluctuates the tempo of the Dubsweat workout by combining dubstep, a genre of electronic music that experiments with drum and bass beats and plyometric exercises, which are used to build leg strength for jumping and sprinting. He designed the Dubsweat workout during the summer, but it was not offered until this semester. The class filled to capacity within the first five minutes it was offered on its first night.

Freshman Sam Horan, a weekly attendee of the Dubsweat class, said Pappadia suggested he join the class while the two of them were training together last semester, and it was an opportunity that he couldn’t pass up.

“If I do two things I like, which are working out and dubstep, then I’d be killing two birds with one stone,” Horan said.

Horan has lost 15 pounds while training with Pappadia and has gained muscle mass in the process. He attributes his weight loss to the workout philosophy he shares with Pappadia — that it’s just as important to have fun while exercising as it is to get fit.

Pappadia often trains his friends at the fitness center when he is not running the Dubsweat class, which Miller said has allowed the two of them to spend scheduled time with each other every week. Miller said the workouts help him fulfill his potential.

“He has a gift for knowing what people are capable of, and as a personal trainer he has a good way of getting it out of people,” Miller said.

Pappadia has not abandoned his own theatrical roots. During winter break, he acted in an independent film with actor Eric Roberts, actress Julia Roberts’ brother, titled “The Night Never Sleeps.” The film is set for release later this year.

Pappadia said seeing the enthusiasm from underclassman in his class reminds him of his own past.

“To me, an important aspect of training is that I am creating not just physical changes but lifestyle changes as well,” he said. “I now live by the saying, ‘Never give up on your body. Let your body give up on you.’”

The course gives students the opportunity to learn about forest products through three projects: edible mushroom cultivation, maple syrup and beekeeping, and honey harvesting. The sugarbush, which is an area of maple trees, is located toward the southeast side of Ithaca College Natural Lands, almost to Troy Road. The syrup production project is in its fifth year.

Sophomore Stephanie Bartzick, a student in the class and one of the four who visited the site Saturday, said the damage was upsetting.

“We were looking at the hooks that hold the buckets and they were snipped,” Bartzick said. “And the taps, which the sap comes out of, were all taken.”

The buckets on the ground were empty, and Bartzick estimated a loss of 20 to 30 gallons of sap.

Senior Todd Aldrich, former class participant and current teaching assistant, said he was upset by the vandalism but proud of the students’ reaction.

“I was pretty angry when I saw it. I take a lot of personal pride in this project,” Aldrich said. “I was also very pleased to see what a quick response the rest of the class had.”

The students notified the Office of Public Safety on Saturday. Sergeant Ron Hart said they are looking into the incident.

“We have an ongoing investigation, and it’s basically just unsolved at this point,” he said.

Bartzick said students have been monitoring the site since the discovery on Saturday. Every day until about 10 p.m. students take shifts spending time at the site.

Aldrich hopes that monitoring will not continue through the week.

“I don’t think there will be much of a need to keep guard after [Tuesday],” he said. “It doesn’t seem like they’ll be coming back.”

Hart said this is the first incident of purposeful damages to the forest products operation.

“They’ve been doing this for several years, and to my knowledge this is the first time they’ve had any kind of vandalism or any tampering whatsoever out there,” Hart said.

The damage was different than typical vandalism, Hamilton said, because rather than blatant destruction the damage seemed more purposeful and organized.

“This was more like sabotage in the sense that it was very methodical, and it wasn’t just somebody going in there and smashing things,” he said. “It was really more creepy than that.”

Most of the money needed to run the forest farming class comes from the class itself, primarily by selling the products, Hamilton said.

Aldrich said they are hopeful the class will become self-sufficient.

“The class typically runs off of the previous year’s profits in combination with various grants,” he said. “The hope for the future is that the class can function off of the previous year’s profits.”

Because of this financial uncertainty, Hamilton said it will be hard to replace some of the equipment.

“For example, they slashed the tires of a very expensive wagon that we use for transporting heavy materials, which means that the class will have to make the money to replace those damaged wheels,” he said.

Rather than furthering production or spending their time on other projects, students will have to repeat previous work, Hamilton said.

“Really the biggest lost, I would say, was the students’ time,” he said.

Anyone with information should contact the Office of Public Safety
at 274-3333.

Rebecca* stood outside her downtown Ithaca apartment in a bathrobe. She kissed the boy she had just had sex with good night and put him in a cab to take him home. From that same cab emerged the next boy she’d have sex with that night.

“A very wise man told me once that everyone has a ‘slut phase,’” Rebecca said. “Whether or not they’re successful is another thing, but everyone definitely has their slut phase, men included.”

Rebecca said the last semester that she was single she had 12 sexual partners. According to an online survey conducted by The Ithacan, Rebecca is among only 0.4 percent of women who had six or more sexual partners last semester. The survey polled 450 students at Ithaca College and showed that overall,  the LGBT community is more sexually active than straight students, women are less likely to regret drunken sexual encounters than men, and students believe fellow students are having more sex than they actually are.

Psychologist Ritch Savin-Williams, professor of human development and director of the sex and gender lab at Cornell University, said the tendency to think people are having more sex than they are comes down to what he calls “selective attention.”

“One listens to all the people that are talking about it, but what they don’t take note of is all the people who are not talking about it,” Savin-Williams said.

Nationally, nearly three-quarters of college students had one or no sexual partners in the last 12 months, according to the Spring 2011 American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment. At the college, more than 65 percent of students reported having one or zero sexual partners last semester.

Freshman Elliot Castillo had no sexual partners last semester — not because Castillo can’t pick up a girl, he said, but because he chooses to remain celibate.

“I don’t want to get distracted from my career goals,” he said. “I don’t need a baby trying to suck up my energy.”

Castillo said his choice to stray from sex came after he had sex with three people, all of whom he dated in high school and said were special to him. He said he thinks the media features “ladies’ men” in teen and young adult shows, which leads to the misconception that people have more sex than they do.

“Everyone wants that one story where they’re like, ‘I was so drunk last night, I got with this girl …’” he said. “That kind of story lacks perspective just because it’s seen in the media as cool.”

While 27.1 percent of women at the college had no sexual partners last semester, only 23.7 percent of men could say the same. Nationally, about 30 percent of both male and female students reported having no sexual partners for the past 12 months, according to the Spring 2011 ACHANCHA survey.

In the spring assessment, 7 percent of male students reported having six or more sexual partners over the course of the last year, compared with only
3 percent of female students. In a single semester, 8.6 percent of male students who took The Ithacan’s survey reported having six or more sexual partners. Less than 0.5 percent of female students reported the same.

Though men report having more sex than women both at the college and nationally, junior Christie DelVaglio said women still get saddled with derogatory terms like slut and whore.

“That’s such an old stereotype that we need to stray away from,” she said. “You can’t say that women are ‘sluts’ and ‘whores’ in today’s world when society is so supportive of the strong female image. It’s a completely outdated thought.”

Men at the college aren’t only having more sex than women, they also tend to drink more. While the average male student at the college reports having five to six drinks on a night out, the average female student only has three to four.

Nearly 95 percent of students who took the survey said sexual encounters are more likely when they are intoxicated, and the majority said they think students are likely to regret these encounters. More men said they have regretted drunken sexual encounters than women.

“I look at sex as being fun, especially when drunk,” DelVaglio said. “I can’t say that I’ve regretted any sexual experiences.”

Rebecca said she regrets some sexual experiences she had while she was drinking.

“You have these warm, fuzzy feelings, and even the worst ideas are awesome,” she said. “I definitely have had those times where I probably wouldn’t have gotten involved so quickly with guys if I weren’t drunk, but I feel like, ‘Whatever, I’m drunk, let’s just do this.’”

Sophomore Garen Whitmore, who identifies as gay, said some sexual decisions students make may lead to regret afterward.

“There are very few times I’ve had sex with someone who wasn’t a boyfriend,” he said. “The only times that I have were really disappointing.”

More than three-quarters of students  at the college who identified as LGBT have had sexual encounters under the influence of alcohol, and nearly half have regretted them. This means LGBT students are more likely to regret drunken sexual experiences than students who identify as heterosexual.

“When I was questioning my sexuality, I was extremely depressed,” Whitmore said. “I think that in a college setting it’s easier to have that depression or even just confusion be expressed in ways that are encouraged by our peers, such as having sex, drinking or getting high.”

Lis Maurer, LGBT education, outreach and services program director at the college, said students who are discovering their sexual orientation may have higher rates of sexual encounters, alcoholism and drug use.

Savin-Williams said there are some individuals who feel they must have sexual experiences with people before they know for sure who they are attracted to, but some surveys suggest LGBT alcohol use is not as high as is commonly perceived.

“There are mixed results in other surveys whether or not LGBT people drink more or not, so that ‘fact’ is not established,” he said.

Maurer said there’s a myth that LGBT people have sex more than straight people
because the word “sexual” is in the phrase “sexual orientation.”

“There are many LGBT people that are not sexually active but know their orientation,” Maurer said. “Just as there are heterosexuals that aren’t sexually active but know that they’re attracted to the
opposite sex.”

For Rebecca, sexual decisions are personal and she said everyone has to find their own comfort zone.

“Sex can be magical and beautiful, and at the same time horrendous and awful,” she said. “To find that line you need to find yourself, which is what we’re here to do in college anyway.”

*Names have been changed to protect anonymity.

Engaging in diversity at the college is optional. Students can choose to take a course in Muslim cultures, for example, or join a club to discuss issues surrounding religion, race, gender or sexual orientation.

If the college hosts a “diversity talk” addressing race, the event will most likely by default draw primarily students of underrepresented racial backgrounds. Becoming more diverse does not translate campus-wide if a speaker’s audience is predominantly composed of the minority group he or she addresses.

This problem is a double-edged sword present in some student clubs. For example, groups like the Asian-American Alliance create a safe space for their members to find solutions to racial bias on campus and in class. These students foster an environment they find lacking in the college culture at large. But do most students who don’t identify as Asian-American or have a personal interest in Asian-American culture take it upon themselves to show up? Usually not.

The college plans to include “one course centrally concerned with diversity” as part of the proposed core curriculum. In this context, students should not define “diversity” as simply learning about others who identify with different groups than they do, but as fully understanding the issues concerning these groups.

The college should create a list of classes that emphasize diversity — not courses that incorporate a broad range of topics, but rather intensive-study courses such as Introduction to African Diaspora Studies. A portion of all students’ degree requirements should include taking a course on this list.

After engaging in more courses that incorporate diversity, hopefully all students will feel more comfortable attending a diversity lecture or an African- Latino Society meeting. Students would gain a better understanding of how racial, social and economic diversity plays into the world’s institutionalized systems — and perhaps end the visual divide outside of class.