Despite being raised more than 650 miles from Syracuse, Kara Sheplock was raised eating Cosmos’ pizza and wearing Manny’s gear.

Born in Zionsville, Indiana, her parents raised to her to bleed orange. Originally from Liverpool, her parents often took their family on vacation to the Salt City.

“Literally, orange has been the only color in my closet since I was a tyke,” said Sheplock, a senior food studies major.

Growing up near Indiana University, she would often get into verbal spats with her teachers, pushing back against their Hoosier pride. In her fourth grade play, she was supposed to sing IU’s fight song, but instead snuck SU-related words into the tune.

Sheplock was all set to attend Butler University, which was a mere thirty minutes away from home. She even had a student ID for the school. But the luck of the Irish seemed to be with her on St. Patrick’s Day when she received an email from SU saying that she had gotten in. Sheplock started running up and down the hallways of her house with excitement. A place she always considered her second home, had suddenly become a reality.

This idea of a second home has defined her time at SU. But when she arrived on campus, her dorm life didn’t mimic that home-away-from-home feeling.

Her resident adviser freshman year didn’t foster a nurturing environment. So when she was a junior, she decided to apply to be an RA, and has since built her reputation as “the mama bear” of DellPlain Hall.

Former resident and now-close friend Tessa Stewart said Sheplock acted like a mom in a number of ways. The duo became close on frequent walks to class.

Stewart said when she first found out she would be living next to the resident advisor she “was really pissed” and thought the experience would, put bluntly, “suck.” But the stereotypical-uptight RA caricature was never Sheplock’s style. She choose instead to work on fostering friendships and an open community. Something her residents praise her for.

There is a natural power barrier created between RAs and residents because of the titles placed upon each, Sheplock said.

“You wouldn’t think of hanging out with your RA,” she said. “That was something that was like: ‘Challenge accepted.’”

She combats this barrier between her and her residents by referring to them as her “kids” or “kiddos,” which she said is a more accurate way to describe her relationship with them.

Like a mom, she wants her “kids” to come to her when they need support. She regularly offers people rides, walks new students to class and even helps past residents find apartments to lease.

And she does it all with a smile, a defining feature regularly mentioned by her residents.

But Sheplock’s typical smile was quickly erased from her face one solemn evening in February.

She was standing in Marshall Square Mall texting one of her “kids,” checking in to see how their day was going.

“Good, not as bad as what’s going on in Walnut Hall.”

“What do you mean, what’s going on in Walnut?”

Sheplock stood in shock, her heart sinking to the pit of her stomach as she received more information regarding the passing of a fellow student.

Chills ran through her body. Her thoughts were racing, thinking that one of her kids could be in that building and one of her kids could know her.

Sheplock and her co-RA wanted a way to get the word out about mental health awareness, in light of recent incidents, “even if (Colorful Pizza) was just a philosophy.”

Around a decade ago, when Tumblr, a blog creating website, became popularized, Sheplock created an account with the pizza planet from Toy Story as the background and Colorful Pizza as the name.

She hadn’t used or thought of the account since creating it, but a few days after the incident, it popped into her head.

Pizza is made up of the same basic ingredients, but no two pizzas will ever come out exactly alike, Sheplock said.

Sheplock sat in the lounge of her hall for the next few hours typing away what would become a three-page, single-spaced document titled Colorful Pizza.

She presented the idea to her supervisor intending to make it a part of a mental illness awareness program for the building, but her supervisor liked the idea so much that she gave Sheplock the ability to turn her idea into a building wide campaign to reduce the negative stigma that surrounds mental illness.

Devin Nonnenman, an RA on a different staff, said Sheplock is the type of person who doesn’t give herself the recognition that she deserves.

Nonnenman has only know Sheplock for a semester and a half, but had heard about her long before. When he finally introduced himself, he understood why people felt so positively toward her.

“It just felt like it was someone that I had known for a while,” Nonnenman said. “She just has this presence, this understanding. she knows how to talk to people in a way that makes them feel welcomed.”

Banner photo by Bridget Williams

Published on April 26, 2016 at 11:50 pm

Contact Stacy: sfern100@syr.edu | @StacyFernandezB