Super Hearts Day Nerf Event 104–105 State and National Parks

From left, freshman Preston Tompkins, junior Raphael Brown, sophomores Ethan Prybyla and David Klos standoff during the Super Hearts Day Nerf War event. From left, Tompkins and Klos peek around a corner. Kevin Yu/The Ithacan

STUDENTS DUKE IT OUT AT SUPER HEARTS DAY EVENT HOSTED BY HUMANS VS. ZOMBIE CLUB

BY MADDY MARTIN

On Feb. 12, the Ithaca College Center for Health Sciences (CHS) turned into a battlefeld.

Super Hearts Day Nerf War took place from 7 to 10 p.m. and was the Human vs. Zombies Social Club’s frst event of Spring 2022. The event was Valentine’s and Super Bowl–themed because it took place the Saturday before both. Three different play modes were played over the course of the event, including team vs. team, mafa and cupid, a new elimination game recently created by junior Brittany Hope, the club president, in which players are paired up with who they hit frst. Due to its wide-open space and exposed foors, the CHS atrium makes for the ideal indoor battleground, allowing players to hit each other from different levels and hide in staircases. Even the elevator has a tactical purpose as members of one team use it to quietly ambush the other. While the upper foors are all part of the battlefeld, the center of the bottom functions as a base where all games start from. “[I like] the silliness of the whole club and just being able to be yourself,” said sophomore Ian Volk, the vice president of the Ithaca College Humans vs. Zombies Social Club. “It’s also my biweekly exercise. I get to run around like a madman doing whatever the heck I want.”

Although Nerf blasters are a staple of the club’s games, they are not required to participate. Players have the choice to use Nerf swords, shields and bows as well as unworn rolled-up socks — called bombs — provided to them by the club. Being tapped by a sword or hit by a sock bomb counts the same as being hit with a Nerf dart, meaning the player is out of the game or has lost one of their three lives. “[I like] that I get to be an absolute child and no one makes fun of me,” Hope said. “We’re kids in college and they’re foam darts. We can’t be taken seriously at all and it’s so much fun.” Sophomore Gabrielle Moran joined Humans vs. Zombies last semester, and Super Hearts Nerf War was her second event with the club. She said the Nerf wars felt like a real-life video game. “It’s a real adrenaline rush but in a safe environment,” Moran said. “What I really like is being able to be a little nerdy with this.” The frst game of the night was team vs. team in which the players are split into two teams, one marked with bandanas, the other not. Each player got three chances to get hit with a dart, and the last team left standing won. After a brief intermission in which all the players wandered all three foors cleaning up darts, the frst-ever game of cupid began. In cupid, the frst person a player hits becomes their partner, and they work together as a team until there is only one couple standing.

Hope came up with the game in honor of the event taking place the weekend before Valentine’s Day. The game was a success and Hope said the game will continue to be played at other events. The Super Hearts Day Nerf War was the frst Humans vs. Zombies event for junior Caroline Peyron and sophomore David Klos. “It’s pretty fun and a little chaotic,” Peyron said. “I saw a custodian walk by during the last game and I felt a little bad for him because he’s probably like ‘What’s going on these foors?’ I like it.” Klos joined the Humans vs. Zombies club last semester but didn’t get a chance to participate due to a busy schedule. “Nerf was a big part of childhood,” Klos said. “A lot of my friends and I would have Nerf wars like this in middle school and high school but we teetered off because we all got busy.” The last game of the night was mafa. At the start of the game all the players circle up and draw cards from a deck. Red numbers are mafa members and a red king is a drunk mafa who does not know who the other mafa players are. The ace of spades is the detective who can ask eliminated players what role they were, the king of spades is a doctor who can heal eliminated players and black numbers are civilians. The two jokers are civilian friends who know neither is in the mafa. The game ends when the mafa has eliminated all the civilians or the civilians have eliminated all the mafa.

Once all the roles are assigned, the players head their separate directions. But while other games often have explosive starts, mafa starts much quieter with the players being careful about who they eliminate and who sees them do it. When a player is hit playing mafa, they must sit down in the location where they were taken out until the game ends or they are healed by the doctor. During a game of mafa last semester, Moran said, a group of players was all hit in the elevator while trying to ambush another group. They ended up being stuck in it and were forced to ride it up and down until the end of the game. “It’s a good way to get energy out if you’re stressed,” Hope said. “Maybe bring a friend you hate a little bit, take your anger out on them. We don’t care. Just have fun.”

STUDENTS AND ALUMNI TRAVEL OFF THE BEATEN PATH BY FINDING WORK IN STATE AND NATIONAL PARKS

BY MADDY MARTIN

One night last summer, Lizz Eberhardt ’21 found herself carrying a man in an outdoor rescue stretcher up the edge of a cliff in an active rockfall zone. Eberhardt, who worked as a visitor services ranger in Zion National Park in Utah, was called to respond to a medical emergency with a group of 12 other rangers at 5 p.m. Once the rangers got to the trailhead, they received a call that the patient could not be found. Instead of following the classic safety rule of staying put, the patient had begun climbing down a closed trail and into a rockfall zone. By midnight all the rangers made it down the mountain and the patient was cared for. “By the time I got home it was about 4 o’clock and I had work at 5,” Eberhardt said. “I got about half an hour of sleep. And that is why I really like to educate people about hiking responsibly.” Although most days working in a national or state park are not as turbulent as Eberhardt’s “favorite search and rescue story,” the parks offer rewarding and often adventurous post-college jobs to many Name Name/The Ithacan Courtesy of Paul Corsi Ithaca College alumni. Working as a trail technician or interning in a park can serve as a stepping stone into a larger position in the feld of conservation or interpretation. Or the work can fulfll a sense of wanderlust and show some grit on a resume. From April to September 2019, Paul Corsi ’15, who graduated from the college with a bachelor’s in environmental science, lived on a campsite and hiked miles every day to do maintenance on trails in Yosemite National Park in California as part of the Backcountry Trails Program, a special program in the California Conservation Corps, in which participants spend at least fve months working on trail maintenance and construction in national and state parks in California.

Courtesy of Miriam Maistelman

Courtesy of Lizz Eberhardt

From left, sophomore Miriam Maistelman, Paul Corsi ’15, Lizz Eberhardt ‘21, Madeline Mathers ‘19, Eberhardt pictured twice. They have all worked in national and state parks.

“Their slogan was ‘hard work, miserable conditions and more,’” Corsi said. “I loved it. I felt like a cowboy every day.”

Corsi said the Backcountry Trails Program would also organize challenges for its workers to partake in. Among them was the 24/50 challenge, during which participants would hike 50 miles around the Clark Range in 24 hours.

“Toward the end, we were falling asleep hiking,” Corsi said. “In the beginning we had an easier route and then around midday we had to climb over the mountain and go through Red Peak Pass. As we got over it on the northern side, it was completely snowed over. So we had to spread out searching for the trail.”

Corsi is currently attending Cornell University to get a master’s degree in public affairs.

Madeline Mathers ’19, who graduated from Ithaca College with bachelor’s degrees in environmental studies and television-radio, is an assistant park ranger for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in St. Lawrence County. Her primary role is to educate people about the environment they are in, but she also responds to medical calls and patrols recreational areas. When the parks are in season, Mathers spends much of her time hiking on trails and patrolling campgrounds to make sure people are following the rules and answer any questions they have.

“When people are genuinely interested in where they are, I get really excited,” Mathers said. “I’m hoping that when I impart my knowledge on them they will pass it off to somebody else and generate a good generation of responsible and sustainable hikers and outdoors people. I want to educate people to utilize our resources in a positive way, not exploit them.”

Mary McKean ’15, who has a bachelor’s in environmental studies from Ithaca College and a master’s in public administration from Cornell, is a projects specialist in planning for the National Parks Service at its national offce in Colorado. McKean works with federally owned parks across the country to help to plan out the construction, demolition or rehabbing of streets, buildings and other facilities. She also works on special resource studies to locate potential sites that could become a park.

Right now, U.S. Congress is looking to create more national park units that tell the story of civil rights in Mississippi. McKean’s specifc job is to look at the feasibility of specifc sites by examining the property, speaking with property managers and communicating with the local community about how they feel about the site becoming a park. McKean’s research will become part of a report that goes to Congress to help it make its fnal decision.

“You have to remind yourself that you’re a very small part in the process,” McKean said. “So you do the best you can to come up with accurate information and state the preference of the people who live there and are connected to the story. You want to empower the story and the people.”

Sophomore Miriam Maistelman, an environmental studies major at Ithaca College, took a gap year last year and did trail work in the Grand Canyon as part of the Arizona Conservation Corps from May through August. Maistelman cleared trails of overgrown brush, built retaining walls and helped to construct wheelchair-accessible trails.

“One of the biggest things for me is giving people access to the places that I love,” Maistelman. “I feel like everyone should have the opportunity to see these places and not a lot of people do, unfortunately. Making the trails accessible and being able to give back to the [hiking] community was huge for me.”

Unlike McKean, Corsi, Mathers and Maistelman, Eberhardt did not graduate with a degree in environmental studies. She was a writing and English major while in college. Although she had always loved nature, Eberhardt said she had not thought about working in environmental interpretation until she volunteered at a state park in North Carolina. Through this experience, Eberhardt said she found a love for environmental communication and teaching people about nature.

“[Park ranger] is one of those professions that attracts the people it’s meant to,” Eberhardt said. “It doesn’t matter what you studied formally. A lot of it is your passion for it and how much you care.”

McKean said one of her core values is making sure all people have access to nature and the outdoors. After graduating, McKean worked in environmental education, running programs for children to learn about the environment during camps. However, McKean said she realized many of the children she worked with were privileged and there were many kids who did not get the chance to experience the outdoors. Even if the programs were free, transportation was still an obstacle for many families. In addition to her work for the national parks, McKean is volunteer director of Operations of Rising Roots, a nonproft that rallies for environmental equity.

“Knowing the impact that my connection to nature has had on my life, I really want other people to feel that connection,” McKean said. “Not necessarily experienced it in the same way I do but to have opportunities to experience it in their own way.”

Editor’s Note: Lizz Eberhardt ’21 was a chief copy editor for The Ithacan.

Courtesy of Madeline Mathers Courtesy of Lizz Eberhardt

Junior Ella Hobler holds up a frame of a bee hive at Bee Fest on Oct. 10 . The festival gave visitors a chance to learn about and tour the Ithaca College apiary. Brendan Iannucci/The Ithacan

ITHACA COLLEGE APIARY HOSTS BEE FEST TO EDUCATE COMMUNITY ABOUT BEES AND BEEKEEPING PRACTICES

BY MADDY MARTIN

Baggy white bee suits were passed around to Ithaca College students and community members Oct. 10 as the college’s apiary opened for tours at the Fall Bee Fest. Outside the apiary fence, visitors wandered through the pollinator garden playing nature bingo for honey sticks and made bee houses from tin cans.

The festival was organized by senior Ana Maria Arroyo, juniors Bethany Holland and Julia DiGeronimo and other students taking Ecological Applications: The Nature and Necessity of Bees, taught by Jason Hamilton, professor in the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences. The festival gave visitors the opportunity to explore the pollinator garden, tour the beehives, buy honey and paint bee houses.

The college’s apiary is maintained by Hamilton, his students and scientist in residence Emily O’Neil ’21. Hamilton said the apiary is the only undergraduate educational apiary in the country and creates a unique opportunity for students to work with bees and learn the basics of beekeeping. Bee Fest gave apiary students the chance to teach the community about how bees run their hives and support the local ecosystem.

“When you first get in [the apiary], put on the suit and everything, it’s so nerve-wracking because you’re so afraid you’re going to mess it up,” said Riley Burns, a sophomore environmental studies major. “You hear about how sensitive the hives are, how they’ll swarm sometimes, how they will sting sometimes. It took a lot of buildup for me to go in there.”

O’Neil led several tour groups into the apiary throughout Bee Fest. Prior to graduating, O’Neil was the head beekeeper at the apiary. Now she works as a staff scientist for the Best Bees Company and conducts research using the college’s apiary.

O’Neil said that she is currently doing a study on bee health and is working to implement research about bee nutrition and infections at Cornell University and other major universities in beekeeping practices. One of the major threats to honey bees is varroa mites. This parasite is capable of infecting both adult bees and larvae. Additionally, it can reproduce inside a hive, wreaking havoc on the insects inside. In addition to feeding on the bee body, the mites are vectors for disease.

O’Neil also said she is testing out smart hives, digital sensors that connect to the bottom of beehives and collect data about carbon dioxide levels, acoustics and bee populations. Ideally, O’Neil said, the smart hives will be able to send information to beekeepers and warn them about any changes inside the hive.

O’Neil said that she was first introduced to beekeeping during her freshman year when she was given a tour of the apiary during a class.

“That was the first time I had ever seen bees,” O’Neil said.

“I didn’t really know beekeeping was the thing. [Hamilton] gave us a frame of honey and it was the coolest thing ever because we just walked around eating honeycomb, and I got hooked.”

Senior Ethan Jones was enrolled in Hamilton’s class and helped out at Bee Fest. Jones said he was fascinated by how bees function as a superorganism — a same-species community that reproduces and behaves as one organism.

“You have all these individual bees, but they can’t survive on their own … because not all of them reproduce, but they’re all working together just innately as this big organism that makes massive amounts of honey,” Jones said. “It’s just really cool.”

Denise O’Leary ’17, a local beekeeper who worked as the head beekeeper at the college when she was a student, attended Bee Fest. O’Leary recently received her master beekeeper certification through Cornell and is working to create her own business called Honey Moon Flower Lab.

The Honey Moon Flower Lab, O’Leary said, will be an educational business run out of her two apiaries located in Odessa, New York, on her partner’s family’s land, and Hampshire, New York. O’Leary said she hopes to raise bees that are acclimated to the Finger Lakes region and help other beekeepers get their start.

“Beekeeping is a meditative experience,” O’Leary said. “When you’re in a hive, you’re having to pay attention to so many things and it’s so easy for me to get out of my head and just focus on the bees. You’re smelling all these great smells. You’re touching all the sticky wax and propolis. It’s a full sensory experience that comes with you when you come home. When I come home I smell like smoke and I feel good because I was looking at little golden workers all day.”

O’Leary said she is currently mentoring several

beekeepers around the Ithaca area. Among them are hobbyist beekeepers Jennifer Irwin and John Stiteler. Irwin met O’Leary when they worked together at Just A Taste, a local restaurant. Irwin said that O’Leary convinced her to start beekeeping when she was over for a visit and noticed Irwin was watching a group of bees buzzing over her flowers. Irwin has two beehives in her backyard and says she learned everything she knows about beekeeping from O’Leary. “It’s been great having [O’Leary] here to help me with all of the million billion questions of ‘What does this mean? What does that mean? Oh, you’re looking at this,’” Irwin said. “We usually open the hives together. I’m just now getting comfortable with opening them on my own. … I feel like I can interpret what “You’re smelling all they’re doing, but I need help. I’m getting these great smells. better at it.” Stiteler has kept bees in his yard for You’re touching all the sticky wax over 20 years and said that he reached out to O’Leary two years ago for help with his bees after hearing his neighbors and propolis.” praise her knowledge. Stiteler said that when his wife died a year and a half ago, -Denise O’Leary O’Leary asked him if he told the bees about her death. “She told me about this custom in Europe and the British Isles where if there’s a death in the family, especially the death of the beekeeper himself or herself, or if there’s a birth in the family, you go and tell the bees … because it’s not a good thing to have the bees feel like they’ve been left out of things,” Stiteler said. “And also, bees fly up to heaven. So they’re a connection. I still get a little choked up when I think about telling the bees about my wife’s passing, but it really helped me a lot.” News editor Eliah de Castro contributed reporting.

From left, Junior Mattix Lufrano and senior Bailey Mack search around the apiary for bugs while playing bug bingo at Bee Fest on Oct. 10. Brendan Iannucci/The Ithacan