UPDATED: April 25, 2018 at 11:07 a.m.

Editor’s note: The “Who is Syracuse?” series runs in The Daily Orange every spring to highlight individuals who embody the spirit of Syracuse University. The D.O. encouraged members of the campus community to nominate people who fit this description, and The D.O. selected the final eight nominees. This series explores their stories.

One early April morning, flecks of snow pelted everyone’s faces as a tour group walked out of Crouse-Hinds Hall for a campus tour. About 15 high school students and their parents, some of them seeing Syracuse for the first time, were heading out on an hour-long exploration of the campus. Leading them was Ryan Patel, bright as a traffic cone in his orange jacket.

“Right here, as you can see, we have the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,” he said, squinting at Crouse College through the snow and winning some appreciative chuckles from the shivering crowd. The cold might have been unforgiving, but Patel was effortlessly breaking the ice as he persuaded a new generation of students to go orange.

Patel, a junior public health and biology double major on the pre-med track, has been a U100 tour guide since his freshman year. If he’s not wearing his Forever Orange Alumni Council jacket, he’s donning his orange-and-blue striped U100 rugby shirt. He was wearing both on the day of the freezing tour.

Patel is also a peer educator for healthy relationships through the Office of Health Promotion and a peer mentor through the Office of Learning Communities. He’s practically the face of what it means to be Orange — quite literally, if the two giant posters of his face on his dorm room window from U100 tours are any indication. Next to the posters, a collection of pens and a Syracuse flag poke out of a Spongebob Squarepants pen holder.

Patel doesn’t spend too much time in his room. One of his favorite spots on campus is Dr. Fondy’s Leukemia Laboratory in the Life Sciences Complex, where he conducts sonograms on leukemia-affected cells. Between organic chemistry classes, his work in the Office of Admissions and extracurricular activities in the evening, Patel has little to no free time.

He doesn’t want it anyway, and that’s the way it’s been since he set foot on campus. One of Patel’s favorite parts of being involved is being remembered — giving tours is so normal for Patel now that he doesn’t think twice about it.

But now and then, a student comes along to remind him how significant his tour was in their choice to come to Syracuse. Rohith Pasula, a freshman information management and technology major, is one of those students. Pasula met Patel on his first tour of Syracuse.

“He was a really nice dude,” Pasula recalls. “He took the time to really explain things and definitely answered more of the personalized questions, especially because I had Indian parents and he’s Indian. So my parents were like, ‘Yeah, this guy seems pretty cool.’”

Pasula was under the impression that Indians were “a super minority” in Syracuse, but meeting Patel and hearing about his experience changed his mind. Pasula had applied to Syracuse as an early decision candidate, and Patel’s tour cemented his choice.

“Granted I have only spoken to him a few times, but I have heard of him multiple times,” he said. “People are like ‘Oh, I know Ryan Patel.’”

Patel has made Syracuse his home so seamlessly that it’s easy to forget that his home is nowhere near the East Coast. The Los Angeles native ended up making his mother, Binny Patel, cry for days when he announced that he was headed all the way to Syracuse for college. Binny hated the idea at first, alarmed by the brutal winters. She thought Patel had no idea what he was getting himself into.

But out of all the colleges he looked at, Syracuse was the one that checked off every box.

“It was far away from home and I was able to grow and develop in my own way without any kind of assistance from my family,” he said. “Syracuse was also everything I was looking for, in terms of the sports culture, in terms of the warm and welcoming environment — not weather-wise, but otherwise.”

The top-notch students and the highly ranked programs brought Patel to the East Coast, and it’s these qualities he rattles off in ringing tones to students and parents sizing up Syracuse, including his own. Despite her hesitations, once Binny visited the campus with Patel, she realized it was the perfect fit.

Binny hasn’t seen Patel’s passion — for school, college or culture — ebb since the time he was a boy. The family traveled a lot and Binny remembered one dinner in Australia when Patel, about six or seven years old, drew every waiter, waitress and the restaurant manager into conversation with him.

“He’s just very a kind-hearted, sweet boy,” she said. “He’s a great role model for his younger brothers.”

His brother Dylan is now running for treasurer at his high school, and Binny doubts that would have happened if Ryan hadn’t opened those doors for his brothers.

Jenna Landsman, a junior international relations and Spanish double major, has been inspired by Patel – and his wardrobe choices.

“Whenever I see him, he’s always so positive, no matter what,” she said. “He literally brightens my day because of his jacket.”

The jacket is the first of the loud things about Patel. His five-minute long Snapchat stories that document his life to friends like Landsman are a close second. Despite his packed day, Patel remains in constant touch with his family and friends, Snapchatting them, asking them to come over or in his family’s case, FaceTiming at least six times a week and calling every day.

“He legitimately cares about everyone else,” Landsman said. “He saw when he was a freshman that there needed to be a very uppy person to welcome people from LA and from the minority community. He knew he needed to be someone people looking at Syracuse could relate to.”

On the morning of the tour, Patel made sure he heard every student’s name and what they wanted to do at Syracuse. From the ringing, cheery voice ensuing from the 5-foot-5-inch man — “5-foot-6 on a good day,” he chuckled — it wasn’t at all evident that he’d clocked only five hours of sleep the previous night.

“I make giving back one of my top priorities,” he said. “The reason I got involved in that is because I cared so much about being able to provide a good experience for students. And so, by doing that, I can ensure that I’m leaving a footprint at SU.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, the Forever Orange Student Alumni Council was misnamed. The Daily Orange regrets this error.