Colorado College President L. Song Richardson lent her voice to a panel discussion in our nation’s capital last week about What’s Next for College Admissions following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling striking down affirmative action. The panel was part of a one-day National Summit on Equal Opportunity in Higher Education at the U.S. Department of Education. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona was the keynote speaker for the event, which included a host of high-profile presenters.

Take a listen!

On Thursday, July 6, I visited the historic Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs, the stage for artists Eiko Otake and David Harrington’s With the Dead. The group performance, an adaptation of Otake’s 2020 show at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY, included eight CC alumni dancers: Will Burglechner ’23, Mekael Daniel ’20, Marley Ferguson ’19, Soren Kodak ’20, Darryl Filmore ’20, Emily Ng ’20, Anya Quesnel ’23, and Holli Wenger ’23.

The evening began with a talk led by Harry Weil, vice president of education and public programs at Green-Wood Cemetery. In his discussion, he spoke with Evergreen Cemetery Director Cheryl D. Godbout and Dianne Hartshorn of Heritage Evergreen about the history of cemeteries, their place in the Victorian age as romantic spaces for people to enjoy nature and art, and how they are each working to once again make cemeteries spaces for the living.

“Art enters into the conversation of death and dying in such a unique way,” says Weil. His goal is to create programs that get people comfortable with the uncomfortable. “We have become a death-denying society. With these performances, we bring it back into our daily lives. We can face and embrace the emotion and deal with our own mortality.”

Otake notes that cemeteries are places of memory and contemplation, where a community’s stories and histories lie, where we are reminded of our mortality. During the pandemic, she performed in two cemeteries to reflect on and converse with the dead.

“You can’t really come to the cemetery and not think about death or the people who have died. We know more about living. But we all die,” Otake says. “I thought that performing was my practice of dying. But the practice of dying is not dying. We learn about death by attending to other people’s dying. But we also learn about death by missing the dead.”

For me, Otake’s performance was a powerful and moving experience. It exposed areas of grief in my life in the very space that we often consider to be an endpoint. This time, however, connecting back with Weil’s focus for visitors and the very essence of Otake’s art, it was a space to reflect on life and what we carry through it.

This summer, film students had the opportunity to learn from a production design and visual effects professional — who happens to be a recent Colorado College graduate.

“My experience as a professional in the field, but also as a recent CC alum, has allowed me to bridge the gap from college life to post-college careers,” says Skye Mahaffie ’15. “I have worked in many different aspects of the larger entertainment industry and see myself as a resource to students not just when I’m on campus, but also as a first stop for those who choose to move to Los Angeles and into the Hollywood industry.”

Mahaffie has done a lot in the few years since graduating, even shifting her career focus from production to visual effects. Wherever she lands, however, she makes sure to connect with other CC alumni, recognizing the importance of CC’s network around the world. CC’s growing visibility helps alumni pursue excellent graduate schools and jobs, which Mahaffie strongly believes in.

In 2017, Mahaffie moved to Los Angeles and produced her first feature film, “July Rising,” with several CC students and alumni. While in California, she worked in film design, theatre, live events, and corporate entertainment. She co-founded Broken Slate, a creative collective made up of primarily CC graduates, which has produced four short films, including “What We Find in the Sea.” When the pandemic hit and took away Mahaffie’s on-set production work, she began working full time as a visual effects artist and graphic designer.

“I want students to understand that these mediums are all part of the larger whole of designing the visual world of any kind of storytelling. In the class, I teach students about the interconnected worlds of animation and visual effects, tying theory immediately into practice.”

Throughout this class, students are learning the art and technique of illusion and how to manipulate images to tell a story. Students are working on producing their final film projects, which are made using the various styles of animation and visual effects that they’ve learned during the block.

Check out more of Mahaffie’s work on her website.

Five rising seniors, Addi Schwieterman ’24, Bryn Daney ’24, Mia Zuckerberg ’24, Sydney Vine ’24, and Ayden Cherry ’24, spent time this summer volunteering at Flying Pig Farm, led by alums Barak Ben-Amots ’18 and Ruthie Markwardt ’14, and the organization Food to Power. This program is partially funded by the Mario Montano Fund for Food Justice. The fund is intended to support student access to learning opportunities in non-profit organizations making an impact on food justice in our communities. Additional funding was provided by the Career Center’s Summer Internship Funding program.

“I chose to do the Internship at Flying Pig Farm because I was able to simultaneously learn about sustainable farming and community-oriented food justice. By working on the farm, I can learn hands-on about food production while I also educate and excite community members about their food,” says Schwieterman. “I have been able to meet many people through this internship who have visited the farm and have been able to connect with other farms as well. Through this internship I feel like I have been able to contribute to the community surrounding Colorado College.”

Daney was thrilled to stay in Colorado this summer and participate in this program. “I was drawn to this internship because of my interest in embodied philosophy and community outreach, two topics that I have been able to explore deeply at the farm. The entire experience thus far has been extraordinary, with the farm giving me back everything I put into it tenfold. Whether jumping around with the colorful grasshoppers or admiring sweetly the vast smells of the prairie, every day this summer has been so wonderful.”

Cherry says he chose to work at Food to Power to engage more with the greater Colorado Springs community and to learn more about the Colorado Springs food system. “At Food to Power, I feel as if I can engage with different communities than I normally do on my day-to-day on campus as well as help to make change within communities that are struggling with Colorado Springs' broken food system. I hope that this internship plays a role in changing my views about the food I consume on a daily basis.”

“Food is a passion of mine,” says Vine, who is studying Integrative Design/Architecture and Education at CC. “Forming connections between the roots of food (i.e. the garden) and the larger community is especially important to me. My experience with Food to Power thus far has been rewarding, as we have been working in the garden, meeting new faces, and sorting food donations alongside other volunteers to help the surrounding community.”

With two weeks to go in our trip through Eastern Europe, we found ourselves sweating under the blazing Georgia sun. Gone was the familiar feeling of Slovakia, where we had spent our last month. Standing on the corner of Liberty Square in downtown Tbilisi, we were exhausted from two consecutive days of travel and intimated by the novelty of a wholly new landscape.

But moments after our arrival, we were greeted by the smiling face of Zack Weiss ’22. 

At school, we knew Weiss through the Model United Nations club. Through two years of early-morning meetings, lively afternoon discussions, and Block Break conferences at California universities, Weiss grew from a club acquaintance to a trusted friend. After graduation, he moved halfway across the world to Tbilisi to work as a political consultant.

After exchanging long overdue hugs, we walked north of Liberty Square and descended into one of Weiss’s favorite restaurants. He ordered a smorgasbord of Georgian cuisine and we spent the afternoon catching up.  

Even with Weiss as a companion, we faced obstacles in Georgia that Slovakia did not prepare us for.

Perhaps the most evident was the sensitivity of our work — we were interviewing Russian migrants as they fled conscription. Moreover, we were only a short distance from Russian-occupied Georgia. 

Despite the novelty of the political landscape, we found routine quickly. Each day, we traveled throughout the city in search of interviews and photographs. Most evenings, we’d find Weiss to break down that day’s adventure. 

Then we’d do it all again.