Dwayne Sye, man of mystery, heads design and graphics team

Dwayne Sye is a man of mystery. "Dwayne is sort of Sphinx-like," said incoming Daily Pennsylvanian Managing Editor Scott Calvert. "You never really know what's going on in his mind." "He lives in a room with no light," said roommate and Engineering sophomore Ken Sable. "He is the king of mind games." And a man with that much mystery must be hiding something, right? Wrong. "I'm trying to think of dirt on Dwayne, but I just don't know any, he's so good," said Kaye Panchula, Sye's advisor at The Valley High School in Michigan. "Dwayne is too good, just a great kid." "There's no dirt on him. There's no embarassing stories," said his brother Tait, a junior at the University of Michigan. "He's kind of blah, he never wants to do anything." Well, that was high school, right? Maybe he's become a party animal at college. Wrong again. "I don't party," Sye said. "I do work, I waste time, [time] just goes away." "He doesn't party," Sable agreed. "But he doesn't do work, he just annoys everybody else when they're trying to work." And although his roommates say they go out drinking, Sye doesn't drink at all, a trait his brother attributes to his stubbornness. "If he doesn't want to do something, he won't do it," Tait said. "He won't drink even though his roommates do. He told me when they play drinking games he does push-ups." The not-so-mysterious Engineering sophomore will have to work now, though, as he takes on the role of design director of the DP. The Swartz Creek, Michigan, native will be responsible for designing layout and graphics for the newspaper. Sye's main passion, according to almost everyone who knows him is sports, specifically the University of Michigan Wolverines, the Detroit Pistons and the Detroit Lions. And he certainly gets passionate about them. "I've never been to a Lions game but [Lions Running Back] Barry Sanders is obviously God," Sye said. And how does he feel about the teams in his new hometown? "The Sixers suck, Philadelphia sports teams suck, the Spectrum sucks," Sye said, obviously not trying to make any friends in the City of Brotherly Love. "The Palestra's alright, but the [Detroit] Palace, now, there's a stadium." Sye, a diminutive 5 foot 6 inches, played basketball in high school. "He's physically not built for it," his father Moozen said. "But he likes it, and his school is small, so he got a chance to play." But all agree that Sye is a great hoops player. "I can jump, I surprise people with how high I can jump," Sye said, and his friends back him up. "He can jump," roommate and College sophomore Steve Goldberg said. "He's really good." Still, Sye's most noticeable quality is his terseness. "Until you get to know him, he's very quiet, he's got a very dry wit," Panchula said. Sye's roommates say that although he may be quiet, that doesn't mean he is sane. "He has a rice cooker, but he says what he makes isn't rice, it's 'porridge,' " Sable said. "He lives by his cordless telephone, his inferior computer, and his chopsticks, which you can't wash with soap." As for the dry wit, the way Sye explained the Penn/Penn State mix-up to his friends pretty much sums it up. It seems that people back home were mixing up the two schools, and everyone thought he was going to the home of the Nittany Lions. "I got a card from my fifth grade teacher, and he said, 'Congratulations, and good luck at Penn State,' " Sye said. "I was so pissed in a funny sort of way, because we all know Penn State sucks." So Sye used his valedictory speech to explain the difference to all of his friends. "I told everybody an easy way to remember where I was going," Sye said. "All you have to do is remember, it's just like in Michigan. The University of Michigan is the good school, and Michigan State is the bad one, the University of Pennsylvania is the good school, and Penn State sucks."

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