CC continues Criminal Justice Coalition
Plus, how some off-campus students have been getting to campus
Good morning, and happy Wednesday. On this pandemic date last year, the Colorado College Student Government Association (CCSGA) sent out an email with COVID-19 updates on “CCSGA work, Full Council elections, and staying connected via student orgs.” (This year, the CCSGA has been meeting virtually, and recently held elections).
Today, we report on how CC faculty, students, and staff have stayed involved with criminal justice work in the community. Also, we explain how Lyft has served students living in supplemental housing.
➡️ICYMI: On Monday, our resident microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh gave her weekly forecast for El Paso County. She also explained the California variant and why it’s a cause for concern in Colorado.
✉️In Your Inbox:
On Wednesday, CC leadership sent an email reminding students to be vigilant as the college looks toward a “more ‘normal’” spring and summer.
On Friday, an off-campus student who was recently in Armstrong Hall received a positive COVID-19 test result.
Also on Friday, CC’s acting co-presidents issued a statement condemning anti-Asian discrimination in response to last Tuesday’s shooting in Atlanta.
On Saturday, the co-presidents released an apology for using incorrect terminology in their previous email condemning anti-Asian discrimination.
On Tuesday, two off-campus students received positive COVID-19 test results. One student had been in Barnes Hall and the other in El Pomar Sports Center.
Photo courtesy of Anusha Vajrala ‘23
Keeping up community work with incarcerated populations
When the COVID-19 pandemic began in Colorado a little over a year ago, state correctional officials were faced with a complex issue — mitigating the virus in prison settings.
Tackling that issue did not go without bumps in the road.
In Colorado, 15 out of 20 of the largest outbreaks in the state being in prisons, and 557 of every 1,000 incarcerated people contracting the virus. Additionally, over half of Colorado’s reported cases of the more transmissible, potentially deadlier, B117 variant have been reported in prisons.
“The impacts of COVID have not been equitable, and there are communities that have been disproportionately impacted and there are communities that are more vulnerable to its impacts,” Jordan Travis Radke, director of CC’s Collaborative for Community Engagement, told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
So, since the pandemic began, students and faculty at Colorado College have used community initiatives to reach out to incarcerated populations battered by the pandemic in any way possible.
“An unlikely group of readers, thinkers and writers”
Last year, philosophy professor Alberto Hernandez-Lemus began teaching writing classes at the Centennial Correctional Facility in Canon City, Colo., and the La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo, Colo.
The classes, which Hernandez-Lemus said are not for credit, are a way for students to reflect and critically engage with readings, which then opens possibilities for students to reflect on real-life situations and experiences.
“Reflecting on one’s condition is a very important critical skill, even if it doesn’t give credit,” Hernandez-Lemus told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
While Hernandez-Lemus said he has always met with his students remotely, the early months of the classes had his students gathering together in a room in the correctional facility. However, after facility officials restricted congregations, including those in classroom settings, Hernandez-Lemus’ students were forced to meet for classes completely virtually, and sometimes from their cells.
In addition to the textual analyses Hernandez-Lemus assigns to them, the roughly seven students that typically attend are also expected to write reflective haiku-style poems every day, and around halfway through the semester classes begin to compile their work into collections, which in some cases are then printed and bound by The Press at CC.
In a collection finished last spring, Hernandez-Lemus’ students wrote that “we are an unlikely group of readers, thinkers and writers, whom chance brought together to support each other in developing our craft and finding our own voices as readers, thinkers and writers.”
A coalition for justice
Denise Geronimo ‘24 is the issue organizer for the Criminal Justice Coalition (CJC), a coalition organized under the Collaborative for Community Engagement’s Co-Op focused on issues relating to criminal justice and incarceration.
“This coalition is one of those outlets where students can rise up and find their passions and go out into community and do what they do, especially during a time like this,” Geronimo told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “We are one of the few projects or organizations pushing forward in this issue area to get students engaged.”
Since the pandemic began, Geronimo said the coalition has focused on reaching as many students as it can through virtual means. On March 11, the coalition organized a panel over Zoom in which guest speakers like Dean Williams, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, discussed their experiences with criminal justice reform.
Still, the wrench the pandemic has thrown into the coalition’s normal work has deterred students’ abilities to engage with incarcerated populations directly.
“I wish we could work more with the community, because that’s where you can see the work being done, you know, just getting your hands dirty and getting on the ground” Geronimo said. “But with everything virtual, we’re making the best of everything.”
Striking a balance
With much of the criminal justice activism the CC community has done during the pandemic being confined to virtual formats, there is still much that can be done to improve the lives of incarcerated populations during the pandemic.
For example, one issue that inmates continue to face is the uneven rate at which they have been vaccinated in comparison to the general public, despite being at much higher risk of contracting the virus.
Still, Radke was determined to continue to encourage students and faculty at CC to engage in criminal justice-related work in the community.
“The work is needed, now maybe more than ever, and so we have to continue and we have to continue to show up, but it has to be in ways that are more beneficial than harmful,” Radke said. “And that’s just been a really hard balance to strike, so we’ve had to be really creative.”
🚕“It’s usable:” CC’s Lyft system for supplemental housing
For students living off campus in supplemental housing, a ride to campus has never been easier to come by.
Starting this year, CC gave students the option to live off-campus in The Lodges and the West Edge apartments, and for those students who did not have it, the college provided transportation for students who might have an in-person class or need to get to campus.
Originally, the college set up a bus system to shuttle students to and from campus. But at the beginning of the spring semester this year, CC switched to a different method of transportation — Lyft rides.
The bus system
At the beginning of the academic year, a bus transportation system was offered for students without access to vehicles to get to and from campus.
Two buses ran for students in the Lodges apartments and one bus for those at the West Edge apartments. The buses went from their respective apartment complexes to campus each morning and then from CC back to the apartments in the afternoons.
“The CC shuttle, it’s convenient if it lines up with my schedule … because they don’t have that many,” Kassidy Chan ‘22 told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “It’s inconvenient if I need to go in the middle of the day.”
Jennifer Lam ‘22 said she was supposed to take an in-person class for Block 5, but she didn’t want to put anyone at risk by being on campus more than she needed to during the time between the end of class and the first bus back to the apartments.
“Yeah, so I didn’t take that block because it was in person and it was just awkward amounts of time and there were supposed to be buses, or shuttles, from the Lodges to CC but I never saw them,” Lam told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
Giving students a Lyft
As spring semester came around, the school decided to revamp things. CC announced that they had launched a student program with Lyft Inc. With this program, students living in supplemental housing became eligible for Lyft passes to get to and from campus.
Every month, each eligible student received 40 free Lyft passes, each worth up to $15. The Lyft operations only run between the apartment complexes and CC-designated locations, which include the Charles L. Tutt Library and the Lloyd E. Worner Campus Center from 6 a.m to midnight, Monday through Friday.
Allison Pacheco, the parking office coordinator for Campus Safety, said there are about 150 to 200 students eligible for these passes.
“I think we’ve gotten to about 50% of them being opted into the program,” Pacheco told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “So if they opt in, it means they’ve registered it with their Lyft account, and that they’ve taken at least one ride.”
Lam described the Lyft service as a more convenient method of transportation as she goes to and from campus when she needs to.
“The Lyft ones are really nice because you can just call a Lyft whenever,” Chan said.
And with 40 Lyft passes per block, students haven’t been too worried about running out.
“40 rides gets you 20 days to go to and to go back, and so because a block is 18 days it’s just like, you have that extra four rides,” Lam said. “I don’t think I’ll ever run out.”
For the college, there were two main reasons to make a switch from bus services to Lyft rides.
The first was that buses placed students in close proximity with several other individuals, whereas Lyft rides would have students only near their driver. The second was that Lyft passes would be cheaper for the college than the cost of operating a bus service was.
Luckily, that switch has largely been met with success.
“We can see how many rides were taken a month, and when there were peak times and the most utilisation,” Pacheco said. “It’s definitely had a higher reach so far.”
Not always a breeze
Unfortunately for some, the Lyft rides haven’t always been reliable.
Chan once tried to call a Lyft ride to go to the student health center for a COVID-19 test but was unable to find one.
Philip Gisler ‘24, who lives off campus and had an in-person class for Block 6, said he has had several days where it was difficult for him to find a ride to class. In some cases, that has resulted in Gisler being forced to participate in class virtually.
“I have found that weather and a lack of drivers in the area has made the Lyft service even more difficult to function,” Gisler told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project. “If I were to have to use the service again I would strongly lean towards opting out of an in-person class to avoid it.”
Daya Stanley ‘22 also said she has faced some difficulty finding available drivers, which meant she has had to resort to using the Mountain Metro bus to get to campus.
“You gotta wait on the bus, which is in itself its own challenge because the bus schedule is just limited,” Stanley told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
Stanley added that another challenge presented by the Lyft program is that it does not run on weekends.
“If you have a COVID test on Saturday, good luck to you,” Stanley said.
Yellow light, proceed cautiously
While CC has not yet declared whether supplemental housing, or the Lyft program, will be an option next year, some students still have some ideas and recommendations for the transportation service.
Lam, for one, suggested that the college expand the Lyft program to on-campus students and to make runs to grocery stores, adding that services that already do so are frequently backed up with requests.
“You have to go to Benji’s or The Preserve to get your food,” Lam said. “Sometimes people just don’t want that and they want something else, so expanding to grocery shops would be a smart move.”
She also said that it should be available to on-campus students who may not have access to cars.
Other students have focused on the availability of Lyft rides, especially on weekends.
“Some of us have to get to the school on Saturdays and Sundays due to work,” Stanley said. “So maybe make it easier to get to work because you can’t use the passes on Saturday and Sunday.”
In all, the Lyft program has still been useful for students, despite the limitations its times and availability presents.
“It’s usable but it can be difficult at times,” Gisler said. “Other than that it’s pretty efficient, it’s useful.”
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Esteban Candelaria, Lorea Zabaleta, and Cameron Howell in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear every Monday.
The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community.
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