WHEN IT COMES TO COVID -19,
CC’s Students Write It Best
Introduction by Kirsten Akens ’96 On Oct. 22, the New York Times ran a story titled, “To Cover College Quarantines, We Turned to the Best: Student Journalists.” In a follow-up story two weeks later one of the journalists they interviewed was Arielle Gordon ’21. Gordon and Miriam Brown ’21 founded The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project this summer, with the help of three faculty advisers and funding from a CC summer research grant. For those 10 weeks, the team published stories daily. Brown says it is now solely student-run, through The Catalyst student newspaper, and the two, with Isabel Hicks ’22 and Esteban Candelaria ’21, have been providing original reporting, interviews, and infographics twice a week since the semester began through an email newsletter and website. When it came time for a Bulletin story addressing COVID-19 and its impact on campus, we turned to them for the most authentic CC coverage. Read on for a handful of these student-written stories (edited for style, but otherwise in their original form). And for more like them, subscribe to their newsletter at cccovidreportingproject.substack.com.
Tent teaching has come to Colorado College. Is it here to stay? For some, classes this semester have been more “in-tents” than they may have initially expected. (Spare us your groans. We couldn’t help ourselves.) If you’ve been on campus recently, you’ll notice some new decor: large white tents set up across campus as outdoor classrooms. After scientists raised concerns about how poor ventilation could impact Coronavirus transmission, Colorado College joined other higher-ed institutions embracing the outdoors in efforts to hold in-person classes. Amherst College in Massachusetts has tents on campus, and Rice University in Texas purchased five
open-sided circus tents in addition to four other tent-like structures. “It wasn’t like there was some kind of proclamation that came down: ‘we shall have tents.’ It was just this kind of thing like, ‘what about tents?’” English Department Chair Steve Hayward, who also directs CC’s Journalism Institute, told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “I think that there’s a way in which that really appealed to a lot of people’s safety concerns, but also to one’s imagination.” In the spring, Hayward saw an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about how other institutions were embracing tent-ative classrooms. Then in July, when he was a correspondent
12 | COLORADO COLLEGE BULLETIN | WINTER 2020-2021
for this newsletter, he helped us write a brief about more tent use. Though he didn’t use a tent himself, Hayward helped solidify teaching in tents as an option for other professors. As chair of the English Department, he said he felt a responsibility to make sure that professors were able to teach the way they wanted to as safely as possible. “You know, some of the windows in Armstrong don’t open. ... They don’t ever open,” Hayward said. “And I was thinking that if I had to teach in there, I’d rather do it outside. It was part of what motivated my tent advocacy.” Hayward added that Registrar Phil Apodaca ’87 and CC Facilities Services were the true players who made tent teaching happen.
RAIN OR SHINE: THE BLOCK MUST GO ON During a stroll around campus, you might wander past a couple different classes taking advantage of the outdoor learning. In a tent on the west side of Tutt Science Center, Director of Bluegrass Keith Reed has been giving individual music lessons and meeting with small student groups, including the CC Bluegrass Ensemble. At tables set up underneath the Fishbowl, chemistry students practice problems on whiteboards with Professor of Chemistry Sally Meyer. According to Reed and Meyer, teaching outside certainly has its perks. Though Colorado weather can be notoriously temperamental, professors teaching outside Block 1 say the weather has been mostly cooperative. Plus, the extra air circulation provides a way for students to meet face-to-face outside of stuffy classrooms.
