Convocation and Celebration: First Monday Reveals Campus Dichotomy

Zeke Lloyd, The Catalyst on August 31, 2023

On the morning of First Monday, hundreds of students attended one of two events that celebrated the beginning of the year. Less than a hundred yards apart, one lasted over an hour, while the other ended after just a few minutes.

The first of the two events began in Shove Chapel at 9 a.m..

Just outside the chapel, near the center of the school’s main quad, Tahamina Prity ’26 distributed coffee and doughnuts to tired Colorado College community members. The CC Student Government Association hosted the morning event. Notably, the students surrounding the small breakfast-laden table were disproportionately freshmen – many of whom were told to attend Opening Convocation by Priddy Leaders or First Year Program professors.

Around 8:50 a.m., event staff moved the crowd off the stone path, making way for the long trail of faculty marching towards Shove Chapel. Adorned in robes, faculty entered the chapel and sat in rows behind President L. Song Richardson, Student Body President Vicente Blas Taijeron ’24, and a central podium.

The stage was most densely populated section of the room. The rest of Shove Chapel was sparsely populated; roughly four or five audience members sat at each pew.

“I was told it might be fun,” said Satchel Bell ’27, whose Priddy Leader encouraged him to attend. Bell didn’t know exactly what to expect, saying that he anticipated it would be similar to a religious school’s pep rally.

“I’m happy because class starts 90 minutes later,” said Hunter Markowich ’25, another audience member.

President Richardson took the podium first. She spent the first few minutes of her speech welcoming the class of 2027.

“Congratulations,” said President Song. “You are about to embark on an academic adventure unlike any other.” She went on to mention the unique advantages of the Block Plan, some of the school’s recent accomplishments and the opportunities for growth that arise from life’s challenges.

“At CC we don’t do easy. It’s why we do the Block Plan, the only school who was able to pull that off 50-plus years ago,” President Richardson said. “We were the first school in the country to have an anti-racism commitment. We were the first in the Rocky Mountain West and the eight in North America to achieve carbon neutrality.”

While most of the speech would fit with ease into any of the Opening Convocations between now and 2020 – the first time the event took place after Colorado College released a document titled “Our Plan To Become An Antiracist Institution” – President Richardson tied the speech to the present on two separate occasions. Around halfway through, she said the world needed Colorado College students to help the world adapt to “emerging technologies,” going on to specifically mention artificial intelligence. Richardson also discussed the prevalence and danger of nationwide discord, stating that “democracy is hanging by a thread.”

Student Body President Blas Taijeron followed her, although he began in a different way. After taking a moment to compliment the crowd’s energy, he embarked on a rousing six-minute oration.

“A CC experience for me, just this morning, was waking up at 6 a.m., going to Amy’s Donuts, getting ten dozen doughnuts, and passing it out to students,” Blas Taijeron said. Throughout his address, he highlighted ways students can give back, maintain humility, and recognize the privilege that comes with attending an institution like Colorado College. “Never mistake a degree for licensure to over explain and analyze,” said Blas Taijeron near the end of his speech.

The entire event, from the faculty’s entrance to Chaplain Kate Holbrook’s final remarks, lasted 62 minutes.

Around 9:30 a.m., 30 minutes into the pomp and circumstance happening west of Nevada Ave., a much shorter ceremony took place just across the street. A large group of seniors gathered on Yampa Field, popping bottles of champagne to celebrate their final first day of school. Not all seniors brought champagne, nor did every senior partake in the consumption.

The Office of Campus Safety dispersed the crowd in less than fifteen minutes. Campus Safety Officers poured out champagne bottles and collected the names and identification information of some students.

Cathy Buckley, Director of Campus Safety and Emergency Management, posited that this was not a tradition she had witnessed in the past five years. John Ramsay, the Campus Safety Officer working the day shift that morning, had not seen prior classes celebrate the tradition in his 14-year tenure.

“For me, it’s more of a concern. We do have Champagne Showers. Wednesday, last day of the block, last day of the year. Let’s do it,” said Buckley. “On the Monday before classes start? Probably not the best decision.”

Many of the seniors moved eastward, taking refuge in an off-campus house on Weber Street. Many seniors continued the festivities there until class began at 10:30 a.m.

The Price of My Life

Zeke Lloyd, The Catalyst on March 2, 2023

“October 7, 2006. Our journalist, Politkovskaya, was killed in her own stairwell in her own apartment complex. Her killer left five bullets into her,” said Dmitry Muratov, a Russian journalist, as he detailed the death of one of his reporters at the hands of Putin’s government.

Muratov was the Editor-in-Chief of Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper which has lost six reporters to extrajudicial killings since 2000. Muratov suspects Chechen assassins are responsible for the beatings, stabbings, shootings, and poisonings, although the poison used on one writer indicates the killing was ordered by the Russian Federal Security Service.

The University of Colorado, Colorado Springs hosted Muratov on the night of Tuesday, Feb. 27. I wanted to write a story for the newspaper. I decided to go.

I don’t know if I still want to be a journalist.

Admittedly, it’s an odd time for that doubt to set in. I suspected it might happen eventually, but I thought it would take longer for me to have second thoughts. After all, I already overcame the initial list of reasons not to go into the field.

First and foremost, the industry is incredibly volatile. In ten years, who knows what the day-to-day work of a journalist will look like? Maybe journalist won’t even be an occupation. And even in the short-run, jobs are hard to come by. If you do manage to land a job at a newspaper right after college, your initial salary isn’t going to compare well against fellow Colorado College graduates.

I’m an economics major. If I went down the journalistic path, I’d soon be in a distant tax bracket from the people I sit next to in class.

None of that discouraged me though. I had it all figured out. So I gave the same answer whenever a professor, friend, or distant family member asked my plans were after school.

“I’ll go abroad,” I’d say. “For the first few years, I’ll freelance. I want to be somewhere where there aren’t many journalists.” That was the trick. It had to be. There are so many places in the world without a large reporter presence. And that area is only growing.

In July of 2020, The New York Times moved one-third of its Hong Kong staff to Seoul. Apple Daily, a Chinese newspaper, shut down in June of 2021. Another newspaper in the region, Stand News, shut down in December of the same year.

So much news. Not enough newspapers. What a perfect niche.

I wasn’t ignoring the underlying trend. I knew I would one-day have to face the ugly question: what happens to journalists in a nation with exclusively state-run media?

Honestly, a part of me was drawn to the danger of those places. The soon-to-be-bankers next to me in economics classes would move to New York, Miami, or San Francisco. They’d enjoy a warm, cozy domestic life. I’d be abroad, interviewing despots and disseminating the word of the common citizen, striving to uphold the pillars of liberty through a free press. I was full of hope, eager to pay the price of democracy.

In the back of my mind, though, I knew I was foolhardy. I am no Indiana Jones. Long ago, when I was first pondering the dangers of reporting inside a dictatorship, I wrote down a quote in my journal. I later found out it’s from a book by Margaret Weiss. “Hope is the denial of reality,” wrote Weiss. “It is the carrot dangled in front of the draft horse to keep him plodding along to reach it.” I knew the carrot wouldn’t last forever.

“Today’s event is a significant one,” said Chancellor of UCCS Venkat Reddy as he introduced Muratov. “It gives us the opportunity to recognize that freedom of speech can be a concept that you should not take for granted. Societies with democratic ideals are well served when journalists are permitted to go about their work freely.”

At the sound of his words, pride flooded through me. Journalism, the fourth pillar of democracy. And I was about to learn what that meant, straight from the horse’s mouth. But that’s not what I heard.

“I don’t agree with those words of great bravery that are ascribed to journalists in general and to me in particular,” Muratov said in his first remarks of the night. He spoke through a translator, but he addressed his comments to the audience as though we could all understand his every word. He went on to tell the story of a Ukrainian girl whose home was destroyed by a Russian rocket. “She said, ‘God, please spare my life and the life of my country.’ Now that is courage.”

I scribbled in my notebook, marking the time so I could reference it later. What a great quote. When I heard it, I thought it would make a great introduction to my piece.

Schuyler Foerster, a political science expert who taught at the Air Force Academy before coming to Colorado College as a visiting professor, was moderating the event. His initial questions were about history. How did Russia move past the USSR only to fall back into autocracy in less than a decade? How did Putin rise to the top of that system?

So, my notes don’t say much about the first 45 minutes. History lessons don’t make for great articles.

I winced a little bit at minute 48, though.

“My deputy was poisoned. No skin was left on his body. He disappeared in less than a week,” said Muratov, speaking on the death of journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin in 2003. “He was 53 years old at the time, but in the coffin, I saw a 100-year-old man.”

Some people in the audience gasped, almost as though he was showing them a picture of it.

“Do I have to say that [his] murderers were never found?”

Another gasp, but this time with a little less surprise. People saw that coming.

“October 7, 2006. Our journalist, Politkovskaya, was killed in her own stairwell in her own apartment complex. Her killer put five bullets into her,” said Muratov. She and Shchekochikhin were among the six killed by Russian agents.

There was silence this time. No one gasped. It was becoming real now.

I knew then. That quote would start my story. I wasn’t going to write about young journalists. I wasn’t going to pass on advice to eager-eyed students who are determined to charge headlong into Russia and China, armed with a microphone, laptop, and VPN.

I was going to write about what I always ignored, what I continue to understand on only a basic, fundamental level: the value of a journalist. Not their importance as heroes of free expression, but their role as pawns for dictators to abduct, imprison, and kill.

Throughout history, countless journalists have served the same function as a canary in a coal mine: once they’re dead, it’s time to consider how safe everyone is. Except canaries don’t swarm to mines.

In Taiwan, where Chinese invasion remains a daily threat, 74 new journalists and 46 new media organizations have arrived in the last two years. Despite new precautions taken by journalists in the area, China continues to detain more reporters than any other country. And while it is difficult to find the number of reporters now working in Ukraine, Reporters Without Borders reports that eight have been killed so far.

Figures that I knew and ignored for so long. Until, on Tuesday night, a Russian journalist turned statistics into stories.

I disagree with Muratov. In my mind, journalists like him are some of the bravest people among us.

I just don’t know if I am fit to be among them.

Slovakia at Center Stage of an International Crisis

Zeke Lloyd & Michael Braithwaite, Colorado Springs Gazette on June 18, 2023

BRATISLAVA – The room around Lukáš Novák was out of order. The walls were sparsely decorated. Folded office chairs leaned up against the wall. Cardboard boxes lay on the floor – some half unpacked, others still full.

In the corner of the room, a small couch faced two chairs on the opposite side of a coffee table. The young lawyer, wearing a pair of thin black glasses, poured water from a glass pitcher before setting it on the table. Novák is an attorney with the Human Rights League, an Non-Governmental Organization founded in 2005 to give legal assistance to migrants and refugees. He works in the Bratislava office, which recently relocated to accommodate a growing staff.

Since Russia first invaded Ukraine in February, 2022, over 100,000 Ukrainians have migrated to Slovakia and taken temporary refuge, according to the Slovak Republic Ministry of the Interior.

As the conflict grew and progressed, the Human Rights League saw an increase in size and funding. They moved from a small, one-room workspace to a new office suite. The staff, which numbered less than 10 before the war, is now made up of over 50 administrators and lawyers.

“Also, at this moment, we employ Ukrainian lawyers who are refugees themselves,” said Novák.

One of the largest initiatives of the HRL was the establishment of mass capacity centers, completed in collaboration with municipal governments, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and other NGOs.

“The idea with the center: we wanted to implement the concept of a one stop shop. So under one roof, they could get all the necessary services they needed,” said Novák.

At mass capacity centers, refugees can find “legal, psychological, and social services.” In addition, state agencies help migrants with more complex requests like finding child care or work.

The centers’ main function, though, is registering refugees for temporary protection. Slovakia allowed Ukrainians to apply for this special status only 18 days after Russia’s initial invasion, enabling refugees to live and work in the country until March 4, 2023. In January, the government extended the expiration date another year.

So, until next spring, registering for temporary protection in Slovakia remains fairly easy.

“It's like 30 minutes because they just check your documents. You have to have proof that you are coming from Ukraine,” said Zuzana Števulová, director of Centrum Právnej Pomoci, a state budget organization based out of Bratislava.

Števulová’s organization is also finding a new place as a result of the war. In years past, CPP’s work consisted mostly of providing help to Slovaks who didn’t have the resources to afford their own legal counsel. Much of their assistance centered around personal finance; in 2017, they sorted through over 10,000 bankruptcy cases.

But now almost 60 members of Števulová’s 160-person staff are dedicated to helping Ukrainian refugees.

“Refugees can come to our offices because, as they are inhabitants of Slovakia, they are also qualified for free legal aid,” said Števulová. With the refugees, CPP’s work becomes focused on property law, contract law, and labor law.

But some Slovaks criticize the CPP's newfound attention on refugees.

“Citizens sometimes think that Ukrainians are getting something for free, and that [they] are not getting something for free,” said Števulová. “At the beginning, I think everyone was really about helping. But in every crisis, it's natural that if it lasts very long, and now it's more than a year, people start to be tired.”

In the summer of 2022, four mass capacity centers opened up around Slovakia. Now, only two remain: one in Bratislava and the other in the eastern city of Michalovce.

Galina, a schoolteacher in Bratislava, does not enjoy the addition of the four Ukrainian students, all of whom joined her kindergarten class in the time since the war began.

“They are no good,” she said, wagging her finger and shaking her head. “Absolutely different culture.”

These feelings are common. According to a European Commission report in September 2022, while most Slovaks “considered it necessary” to aid refugees in the first four months of the conflict, over 80% said that the “comprehensive and concentrated support” for Ukrainian migrants is perceived as being given at the expense of Slovak citizens.

But some Slovaks are simply indifferent to the Ukrainian influx.

Sitting with a friend in a quiet, shady corner of a downtown park, a university student named Dunsin had little to say about his new Ukrainian classmates.

“I like them, maybe?” said Dunsin. He wasn’t bothered.

For citizens like Dunsin, Slovakia doesn’t have a place in the conflict. Life goes on. But it is not clear if Slovakia can stay removed.

The small Eastern European nation, a country with roughly the same population as Colorado, faces political influence from all directions. Pushed and pulled by Western influence and communist nostalgia, social media has become a battleground. It is polarizing the Slovak electorate.

“Russian propaganda works in a way where they find an existing problem,” said Pavol Kosnáč, director of the DEKK Research Institute, a think tank focused on social and political analysis. “They use it and just embellish it and make it bigger and longer term.”

Slovaks are being asked to take a side. And their decision to help Ukrainian refugees, while supported by the United Nations, North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union, is challenged every day by Russian propaganda and “local representatives of the pro-Russia sentiment,” according to Kosnáč.

For Slovakia, this is nothing new. The country’s history is torn between east and west. The nation has been intermittently captured and recaptured for nearly two thousand years. In the last century, it formed alliances with the region’s greater powers, becoming an axis state during World War II and then a satellite state of the Soviet Union.

“Slovakia was always small,” said Kosnáč. “There was always a bigger brother.”

Russia’s advance into Ukraine will not test the country’s ability to fight, but its ability to stand ground, push back against the influence of a dominant power, and provide aid to those in need.

Russian expats set up shop in Georgian Black Sea city

Zeke Lloyd & Michael Braithwaite, Colorado Springs Gazette on July 16, 2023

BATUMI, Georgia – The seaside port city on the country's western edge is about 100 miles south of Russian-occupied territory. Colloquially dubbed “Las Vegas of the Black Sea,” Batumi is home to rocky beaches, grand hotels, and numerous casinos.

But since the war in Ukraine began, Batumi’s demographics have shifted. Within the last year, Russian, not Georgian, has become the language of choice as waves of Russians migrating south ha flooded into the city.

Batumi’s streets reflect this influx. Currency exchange shops, becoming more and more necessary for Russian citizens withdrawing money in the wake of Western financial sanctions, are commonplace throughout the city. All offer transactions for Russian Roubles.

Vendors, too, cater to the new market. As a bus from Tbilisi arrived in the city square, taxi drivers, shopkeepers, and landlords surrounded its exits, eagerly offering their services to the disembarking passengers in brisk Russian.

While the city may have gained renown for its tourist appeal, its newer visitors are not necessarily temporary. As Vladamir Putin continues pushing his forces into Ukraine, the city has become a permanent destination for migrant Russians looking to maintain a steady life abroad amidst chaos at home.

“They are finding and creating their economic niche in the country – opening their cafes, their restaurants, especially in Batumi,” said David Matsaberidze, professor of international relations at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University. According to Matsaberidze, this new economic wave is the latest component of a gradual Georgian shift toward overdependence on the Russian economy.

But in addition to a dependency on Russian goods, Matsaberidze says, the economy is now becoming dependent on Russian people.

“As for getting jobs, it’s basically jobs that they are creating for themselves,” said Matsaberidze.

But while Russians fill an economic role in the country, it comes at a price. With such a small economy, Georgia was not prepared for a significant population influx, and side effects of the Russian migration have become more and more apparent as the conflict continues.

“I would say that it became a difficult country to live in the moment the Russians arrived,” said Daria Polkina, a Russian woman now living in Georgia. “It’s a country that’s difficult to live in mostly for the locals, sadly. And this is also why the Russians encounter negativity. Because the rent went skyrocketing; because the prices in shops skyrocketed.”

Even amidst rising costs, Polkina has found an indefinite home in Georgia. “I am very grateful for the fact that they even allow us to live here.”

But while citizens, businesses, and government institutions are generally accepting of the incoming population, some migrants experience anti-Russian sentiment in isolated events. Some Russians face xenophobic comments in bars and at bus stops. Some businesses do not allow Russians inside at all. On one occasion, according to Polkina, local police intended to ticket a group for jaywalking until the authorities realized the perpetrators were not, in fact, Russian migrants.

But coming south and renouncing the Kremlin does not necessarily pave an easy path, either. Inside Georgia and its eastern neighbors, Armenia and Azerbaijan, some residents’ nostalgia for the Soviet Union manifests in pro-Putin sentiments. In Armenia, one Russian man, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons, was held up at gunpoint until he praised Putin’s leadership.

Even with economic and social challenges, many of the Russians living abroad do not consider returning home.

“Of course I have dear memories of my childhood there. Of course I have friends there, family there,” said Polkina. “But when it comes to the government and the politics, and when it comes to what, right now, has become of Russia, I hate it.”

“I was scared to actually be in Russia,” said the Russian man, who now lives in Georgia. Although he had long-ago filed documentation about medical conditions that made him ineligible for military service, Russian authorities claimed to have lost the records and added him to the list of potential draftees.

“They can do whatever they want with the documents you have to make you go to war. They can pull up stuff like that,” he said.

But even after fleeing their home country, expatriates find themselves caught in the middle of a distinct political conflict within Georgia where Russian influence battles Western ideals.

Russian forces occupy 20% of the country. Meanwhile, the Georgian legislature mandates that the European Union flag hangs from every government building despite the fact that Georgia is not a member of the political conglomerate.

After the nation applied in March 2022, the E.U. listed political and economic reforms Georgia would need to undergo in order to gain union status. The highlighted areas of improvement included government transparency, judicial accountability, and mechanisms to ensure free elections.

As Georgia tries to better understand its place in the international sphere, Russian migrants attempt to do the same amidst a fast-growing diaspora. Many Russians raised on pro-Kremlin propaganda are now experiencing the West for the first time. And some, while they have enjoyed the benefits of living outside of Russia, remain underwhelmed by life outside its borders.

“It’s sad,” said the Russian man. “Sometimes it is not as safe here as I could have thought it could be.”

But Russia’s continued militarism, both domestically and abroad, has led many expatriates to rethink their national identity. Some are looking to gain their Georgian citizenship and have no intentions of returning to their homeland.

“Russia is going to hell,” said the Russian man.

Playing Minecraft for 24 Hours

Zeke Lloyd, The Catalyst on November 9, 2023

A tour came through the Worner Campus Center a little after noon on Saturday. The clock displaying the time remaining read a little over 12 hours. We were in good spirits. The dawn that morning had provided enough momentum to last through the early afternoon. It was gone by 3 p.m.

But when the tour came through, we were laughing and chatting. Looking around at our haggard yet determined faces, I wondered what we looked like to prospective students. I wondered what it made them think about this place. What would this have meant to me?

Over the course of our time playing, many people came through Worner Center. Some gave us funny looks. Some just watched for a moment, silently, then moved on. Most people ignored us.

But a few chose to share their opinions outright.

There were only two kinds of comments. The first kind were the various forms of support people shared. For instance, the game’s outset was charged with electricity. A number of people stayed around for a while to watch.

But at some point late Friday night, after we passed hour three, the board game club descended from the second floor and stood for a while, looking at our humble huddle. When they left, the initial crowd followed.

There were not many visitors during the early hours of Saturday morning. Very few of us stayed to play until dawn. Then came the Rastall brunch rush. We started to notice a change in the commentary. We began hearing the same question, over and over again.

Why hadn’t we beaten the game?

Throughout the entire session, we only beat the game once. It was at hour 16. Just a little after lunch on Saturday afternoon.

Beating it had a particular effect on us. Suddenly, we had nothing left to do.

We had eight hours to kill. That’s when it became about pushing ourselves.

“I’m exhausted. I don’t want to be doing this anymore, I know it’s rotting my brain,” said Ian Johnson ’24, one of the event’s main organizers.

The trick was to convince yourself it mattered. It was ludicrous; the medium felt so reductive. But the idea that the world we made had consequences. That things we built mattered. That adventures still held both risk and reward. That kept us going. So we tried to convince ourselves.

Then you realize it’s crazy to really care all that much about Minecraft. And then you notice the lights, in the last 20 hours, have not changed at all. You remember you’ve seen a sunset, a sunrise, and now there’s another sunset approaching.

You miss the world outside. And you’re excited to go back. You miss all the people who would’ve made it easier.

Over the time we were there, we had over 40 players. Some family members and close friends called in to play. Countless students dropped by our corner of Worner for just a few minutes.

We could not have done it without them. We found a community at the tables, and we felt the support from those we loved. It would have been impossible without both.

But after hecklers came to terms with our slow in-game progress, they started asking a different question. Really, everyone asked us this question eventually. It was the same question we keep asking ourselves: “Why are you doing this?”

By hour 18, we were on the brink. But we were still playing. None of us could explain it. “I can recognize that it’s irrational, but I’m going to do it anyway,” said Johnson.

If you have come here to find some explanation of why three people endeavored to play Minecraft for 24 consecutive hours, skip to the next article. Twenty-four hours later, we still don’t know why we did it.

It’s not why we did it, it’s why we tried. We wanted something larger. We put in 24 hours, and that number was multiplied by the investments from our community.

To those who put in 24-hours and to those who spent only five minutes, thank you for being part of something with us.

That’s all we wanted – something to share. It was just a time to be together, in one space, in one world. And it was fun.

Let’s do it again sometime.

Why the Person Next to You Doesn’t Read The Catalyst