First Tuesday of the spring semester usually means one thing for upperclassmen at Colorado College: A heaving night at Tony’s.
The downtown Colorado Springs bar turns into a college hotspot on Tuesday nights and serves as a rite of passage for CC students. For many juniors who turned 21 while studying abroad, this marked their first Tony’s Tuesday. It was a night of catching up and reunion between friends who had been apart for months. Some swapped stories of their travels abroad, while others celebrated having their peers back on campus.
“Last semester was a little quiet,” said Finn Donahue ‘27. “It was just empty, really.”
With around 27% of the junior class off campus last semester, scattered across more than 50 countries, CC was indeed operating at a reduced capacity.
Each year, many students take blocks or full semesters abroad. Last year, 599 students took part in a block away, semester or full year away from campus, according to The Office of Global Education & Field Studies. Global Ed attributes the Block Plan’s “innovative academic model” and “flexible scheduling” to the large number of students who have taken advantage of this opportunity.
“Colorado College has made study away a reality for upwards of 70% of all graduates over the past decade,” according to Global Ed.
At a school with just over 2,100 students, losing nearly 600 of them from campus life each year doesn’t just change the numbers. It changes the whole environment. Over 80% of students abroad were juniors during the 2024-25 academic year. This annual migration leaves students who don’t go abroad to live in often-reduced social circles, not to mention empty apartments.
The majority of students who participate in study abroad go in their junior fall semester, following their friends out of the country to live around the world.
“I went abroad that semester because I was like, ‘all my friends are abroad that semester,’” said junior Oliver Churchill. “I don’t wanna miss out, not seeing my friends for a year.”
Of course, not everyone goes abroad.
“It was quieter. It wasn’t bad. It was just kind of different,” said Theo Seamon ‘27, who was also on campus last semester.
When asked about participation in campus events last semester, Andrew Beck, Interim Director of Campus Activities, said there was “heavy” participation, mostly credited to the first-year class. Beck said that, possibly because today’s first-years went through the pandemic in middle school, this might be the cause of greater participation in campus events.
“Most of my friends were away,” said Seamon. “So I just made new friends.”
“It felt quieter because I feel like there were a lot of big personalities that were gone that were friends with a lot of people at CC,” said Reed Haymons ‘27. “The majority of my friends were still here, which was nice.”
“You’d look around in apartments and they’re mostly vacant,” said Donahue. “A lot of times you’d visit friends and they’re the only ones in that apartment that should have eight people in it.”
Haymons agrees, saying that a friend who lives in a four-person apartment “was empty with just her and one other person.” He added that another couple of friends moved into an empty apartment during the semester. Apartments are the most coveted on-campus living accommodations, filling first before single rooms in residence halls.
Juniors coming back from abroad became victims of a housing “crunch.”
What were vacant rooms in the fall became golden opportunities for students returning to campus. The current trends in abroad enrollment show that around 150 juniors opt to leave for the fall semester, while only around 50 leave in the spring.
“One of the things we are really pushing right now,” said Allen Bertsche, Director of Off-Campus & Global Experience, “is the idea of looking at spring more seriously because of housing.”
“What we want to do is get as close to 75-75 as we can,” he added. “Because that eliminates those [housing] crunches, and it eliminates the gaps in the fall where we don’t have every room filled. We’re hoping that if we can convince more students that it is beneficial to go away in the spring, then we can get to a better balance, and then we won’t have those housing crunches or class space crunches in the spring semester.”
Sixty to 70% of semester-away students choose to be away in the fall. Just under 140 juniors participated in partner programs last semester, compared with only 53 this semester. Over the last 10 years, approximately 50% of students studying away have been juniors, according to the Office of Global Education & Field Study.
There are a few predominant causes of why students don’t go abroad, according to Bertsche. “The first is it’s not a priority,” he said. “The second thing that matters a lot is finance.”
The college advertises its abroad opportunities by promoting that students often won’t have to pay more than a normal semester’s tuition.
“You pay your family’s estimated contribution and then the college provides aid to support the rest,” said Bertsche. “But the reality is we have students at CC who are working on campus or working off campus and sending money home to support their family, and they can’t do that when they’re overseas. They can’t work at all.”
The school is aware of this barrier for some students, which is why blocks away are sometimes a lot more achievable. Global Ed. reported that 349 students of the 599 who went abroad last year participated in a block away.
Bertsche says that it’s easier to go on a program with “a group of students from the same school, with faculty from the same school, where the courses already count.”
“That’s easy to sell to your parents,” he said. “It’s easy to sell yourself as like, this is a controlled environment. We think it’s not just financial, it’s not just looking at your major. It’s also what do you feel you are capable of doing on your own?”
Haymons decided to stay on campus last semester, saying, “As a double major, I didn’t have the time to take off a full semester, so that’s why I’ve been doing blocks abroad to break it up.”
Now that nearly a third of the junior class is back on campus, the party is back on.
“It just feels very much like freshman year again,” said Haymons. “Like when everyone came to school, and everything just felt new again, it kind of feels like that.”
Haymons said that there were fewer parties last semester, often with only “one or two things max” on the weekends. Now that people are back, he said, “I feel like there’s multiple things going on every night.”
“[Tony’s] was like a reunion,” said Robin Bock ‘27, who studied abroad in Kenya. “It was very overwhelming. But it was good to see everyone, and I think everyone was also in the same boat.”