JAN 23, 2025 | NEWS | By Seth Jahraus
Last year made for serious campus news. Impassioned protests took center stage, while hefty leadership changes in the administration underscored the tensions. Yet, the academic calendar makes year-end wrap-ups like this one difficult.
The academic calendar replaces the standard January through December calendar for many students. “Last year” for most of us likely means the grade before, which could range anywhere between three and 21 months prior, depending on what time of the actual calendar year you’re referring to.
Additionally, a fourth of campus was not around at the start of 2024. Despite this, looking back to the start of the real year can provide some context to the changes within Colorado College over multiple semesters and cohorts.
I’ve compiled what I believe to be the biggest stories from 2024 provided by news reporters and editors for The Catalyst.
The largest trend of the year was the multitude of student protests regarding the conflict in Gaza, which only grew in impact following 2023’s original unrest. Students on our campus, as well as over 100 campuses nationwide, gathered in protest. CC activists hosted a non-violent encampment that lasted for close to two weeks.
Colorado College experienced some turnover within its leadership. Former President L. Song Richardson resigned and became the shortest-tenured non-interim president the college had ever had. The student government at CC also experienced some leadership changes from a shaky election cycle and some internal discord.
A deeper, drawn-out look at the above trends is written below, where I have chronicled the major headlines of each month in 2024.
January
Following an increase of tensions on campus amidst the destruction caused by the Israel-Hamas war, Colorado College Hillel invited local speakers from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish advocacy group, to speak on campus.
The ADL speakers hosted their workshop in a classroom inside the Ed Robson Arena. Around 50 students gathered outside the building to conduct a demonstration involving loud music and chants pointed toward the workshop. The protesting students disagreed with the ADL’s stance on anti-Zionism and believed the institution was rooted in a history of Islamophobia.
Long-time professor Owen Cramer described the campus as “the most conflicted” it’s ever been following the event and pointed to the labor wars of the early 20th century as a possible comparison.
February
Former President L. Song Richardson resigned the first week of February. After two and a half years at the position, Richardson and board chair Jeff Keller emailed the campus body announcing that she would be stepping down, marking her as the shortest-tenured president at Colorado College since the first in 1876.
In the resignation email, Richardson and Keller announced that Manya Whitaker, Richardson’s chief of staff at the time, would serve as interim president for two years following Richardson’s departure.
“As our national dialogue about these topics continues to intensify,” Richardson wrote, “I find myself increasingly torn between my desire to pursue that work as an academic with the freedom to fully engage in these debates, express my personal views, and challenge the status quo, and my responsibilities to CC as president.”
Interim President Whitaker has spent half a year officially occupying the position. When asked if she wants to continue working as president following her two-year timeline, Whitaker said that decision resides with the board and that her job right now is to set up the next president for success, whoever it may be.
Later in the month, the housing department informed the Synergy program that their long-standing third space and living quarters would be disbanded. The “Synergy House” featured a student-run garden, solar panels, greywater systems and energy-efficient appliances for its residents. The program and house were based on preserving the practices and principles of sustainability.
The housing department declared that the Synergy House and its inhabitants had failed to establish an adequate relationship with the Office of Sustainability. The news evoked a strong response from residents, past and present and the greater campus community. Approximately 240 people signed a petition to “save” the houses. The Synergy Program could not maintain its claim over the property, however, the house is currently being used as a standard residence for students.
March
On the third of the month, student protesters occupied the Charles L. Tutt library from noon to midnight. The students adorned the walls of the second floor tutoring center with Palestinian flags and signs calling for Colorado College to divest from companies associated with Israel. In the center of the large space was a speaker blaring music that could be heard from the first to the fourth floor of the library.
The library occupation was the first protest that led to disciplinary action for students on CC’s campus. Campus Safety visited the occupation several times to discourage the protesters from playing loud music or disrupting the library goers. When they refused, the college found the students had violated its freedom of expression policy and code of conduct.
“Since students have been organizing on campus around the genocide currently happening in Gaza, the institution has made it very clear that they don’t appreciate our demonstrations,” said one of the protest organizers who asked not to be named for fear of suspension. “They want us to be quiet and we’re not gonna’ be quiet.”
At the tail end of the month, the Office of Student Life called a dozen students from the protest to face conduct case hearings regarding their actions. Members from a conduct case panel, led by Assistant Dean of Students Derrel Stinson, reviewed each students’ file to see if they had violated policies set out by the college. Around 50 students and faculty members crammed into the tiny office outside of the conference room. These hearings took place in to show support for the students inside. The group believed the students were wrongly prosecuted for expressing their right to free speech.
Dr. Heidi R. Lewis, a professor of feminist and gender studies at CC who attended the hearings, published a blog post to the National Women’s Studies Association website calling into question the college’s actions.
“What, however, is a protest if not an intentional disruption? Why is speaking out against war and Zionist colonization an occasion for disciplinary messaging? Why are we — the ones speaking out — being criminalized?” she wrote. “Have administrators forgotten that many of the college’s departments and programs, like Feminist & Gender Studies and Race, Ethnicity, & Migration Studies, wouldn’t exist without protest?”
The college required students found guilty by the panel to write an essay reflecting on their actions. Student records were later all expunged after students and faculty applied pressure to then President L. Song Richardson in a public meeting to do so.
The event and subsequent response from the college prompted students and faculty alike to call into question the current freedom of expression policy and whether it clearly articulates the limits of student protest on campus. A group of administrators and selected professors have been reviewing the policy with hopes of producing an updated version sometime after the start of 2025.
March also featured the Colorado College Student Government Association (CCSGA) election cycle which had a particularly rocky rollout. There were internal conflicts surrounding some last minute decisions that impacted the campaign process. Candidates in this election cycle could collect their required student signatures both in person and digitally for the first time ever. Additionally, when voting forms hit student inboxes, graduating seniors were not on the receiving end, a decision that had not been confirmed by the entire organization. It was later reversed and allowed graduating seniors to vote.
The election committee eventually tallied votes and introduced the candidates set to take their positions the following semester. Koray Gates ‘25 took home the presidency and is now approaching the halfway point of his tenure.
April
In late April, the CCSGA Vice President of Internal Affairs resigned following pressure from comembers and an official impeachment inquiry. The position oversees the election process, which in the month prior had not gone smoothly. Internal tensions spiked when CCSGA members believed the vice president had acted outside of their designated role, resulting in a co-member filing an official impeachment notice against the individual. The report cited the individual’s unprecedented decisions during the election process. Later, the same member used the CCSGA mass email service to send a message advertising an event sponsored by the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) to the entire campus. The YAF is a nationwide organization that calls itself “the leading organization for young conservatives.” The vice president resigned shortly after the impeachment notice.
May
At the very start of the month, students and faculty staged a walkout on Tava Quad protesting the war in Gaza. Approximately 100 students left class to gather on the quad to listen to speeches and announcements made by peers, professors and alumni. It was by far the largest protest to take place on campus since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.
A few days after the walkout, student protesters held an encampment on the quad outside of the library, which lasted until May 15. Students leading the encampment identified themselves as members of the Colorado College Liberation Zone (CCLZ). The encampment came with a list of demands from the protesters which called for an increase in transparency regarding the college’s investment portfolio, the establishment of regular meetings between the administration and CCLZ representatives and divestment from all companies with ties to the conflict in Gaza.
The encampment remained peaceful for the entirety of its operation. Professors and locals often provided food and warm blankets for the students within the camp. Harsh winds persisted throughout the encampment which made sleeping and tent maintenance a consistent struggle. During the day, the camp would screen movies, host readings and provide activities for its members and anyone wanting to drop by and participate. Interactions with Campus Safety and law enforcement were minimal, usually consisting of drive-bys instead of direct confrontations.
“We are taking into consideration the national climate in our response…intentional effort not to escalate things because we care deeply about the health and safety of our students,” wrote the Dean of the College Pedro de Araujo in an email.
The encampment ended as the summer approached and CCLZ members reached an agreement with the administration to facilitate meetings between its members and a board representative.
June/July
As students went away for the summer, there was little to cover on campus. Interim President Whitaker assumed her position on July 1, and former President Richardson started her new journey back at UC Irvine to pursue programs supporting her passions of law and equity.
August
At the start of the new academic year, the National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC) filed a complaint against CC stating that the college had not done all it could to protect its Jewish students during the on-campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war. Virginia law firm Holtzman Vogel filed the complaint on behalf of the NJAC against the school to the US Department of Education, calling on it to investigate CC. The complaint stated that the college had contributed to an antisemetic campus climate that they had “permitted to fester.” The US Department of Education can now decide whether its Office for Civil Rights will conduct an investigation against the school. These processes normally last for quite some time as exemplified by cases against Brown, which took nearly a whole year to get reviewed and acted upon.
September
September produced another relatively quiet month as students settled into the new academic year. The Colorado College Outdoor Education Office initiated a self-served audit from an external institution to investigate its diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts. The organization, DEI in the Outdoors, is a DEI consulting firm that specializes in organizations such as CC Outdoor Ed. Some gaps students identified included harsh barriers for students with no significant previous outdoor experiences. The audit will most likely last until the end of the academic year.
October
In October, The Catalyst investigated the enrollment numbers at CC which had recently been released. The subsequent article found that the school had enrolled nine Black students, making up 1.9% of the first-year class. Low percentages for nonwhite students is a trend across the nation, specifically at smaller colleges such as CC. The affirmative action ruling made by the Supreme Court a year prior created an easy target to point fingers. However, as the New York Times has consistently reported, it’s difficult to pin the blame entirely on the court decision as other factors, including the financial aid crisis could have played a role.
In addition to the shocking demographics of the first-year class, the paper also found that the school had significantly under-enrolled compared to years past. Approximately 480 students made up the cohort, around 40 students short of the 525 student minimum the admissions department typically shoots for. Chief Financial Officer Lori Seager said in an interview that small classes are bound to happen. For instance, 2020 produced a smaller class size as a result of COVID-19. The college enrolled 620 students the next year, the college’s biggest cohort ever. The struggles start if next year the college is unable to piece together a bigger class to offset the small rising sophomore class.
Following the encampment from the semester before, student advocates were met with disappointing news. The board declared in an email to the campus body that they would not be pursuing divestment anytime soon. At a meeting with the board and its investment committee later in the month, the students pitched divestment one last time and proposed the formation of a student committee to have greater student involvement in investment decisions going forward.
November
The heated presidential election underscored the month of November. Students were able to use the relatively new on-campus ballot drop box for their votes as many voted in their first ever presidential election.
Some pressing Colorado initiatives made the ballot as well. Proposition 131, which would have implemented a version of ranked-choice voting into future state elections, failed by a small margin. Colorado Springs voted “no” on ballot question 2D and “yes” on ballot question 300, which means the city is inching closer to the recreational sale of marijuana within its limits.
On campus, CC celebrated its sesquicentennial or 150th anniversary over homecoming. Various events and games were held over the weekend, celebrating the event with alumni, students and staff. There were light student protests during the events, where activists held Palestinian flags and chanted at the passing crowd of alumni. There was pushback from Campus Safety who allegedly unplugged a speaker which had been projecting to the crowd of alumni on Worner Quad.
December
Students returned from Thanksgiving break after slightly altering the typical schedule. Students left their Block 4 classes after one week only to return to finish the class at the start of December. With two and a half weeks left in the block, The Catalyst only published two issues in December.
Within CCSGA, the finance committee made a few major money moves. The esports team reportedly receives a massive budget increase, which could leak into every student’s tuition balance at the start of next year. The team requested more than $50,000, which CCSGA approved. However, the request is outside of the organization’s budget which means there will be around a $20 add-on to student activity fees next year for every student.
The coordinators for the massive on-campus event, Llamapalooza, which features live music, games and food on Worner Quad in a festival-like setting, requested $51,353.55 from CCSGA. Most of the funds will go to booking artists for the event with potential performers such as Del Water Gap, Aaron May and Jeremy Zucker.