Since 2020, donors have provided more than $1,333,000 to advance CC’s commitment to antiracism.
In 2018, Colorado College became one of the first institutions of higher education in the nation to make a public commitment to antiracism — declaring that it would work proactively to identify and dismantle racism on campus and in the community.
CC’s Antiracism Implementation Plan, published in 2019, includes specific goals, responsible parties, and intended outcomes on its path toward becoming an antiracist institution. A dynamic resource, the plan is continually adapted and supplemented with new ideas for action. Still, the goal remains the same: to strive for an environment that does not foster negative experiences or outcomes based on race.
To support this work, the Antiracism at CC Fund was established in 2020 with a $1 million lead gift from CC Trustee Susie Burghart ’77. In the years since, the fund has had additional collective support from across the CC community.
“Throughout higher education, there are many equity gaps and opportunity gaps that require funding in order to address,” said Rosalie Rodriguez, Senior Associate Dean for Student Equity and Inclusion at CC. “Additionally, when we want to create new or different experiences for students, we need someone to be able to administer the program, plan the logistics, and ensure learning outcomes are being met. This means additional staff may be needed, or we provide new professional development opportunities in order to be able to meet the needs.”
The Antiracism at CC Fund has enabled impactful learning and collaboration opportunities for students, faculty, staff, and the community — all of which advance CC’s commitment to antiracism within and beyond the borders of campus.
Community Programs for Education and Action
CC’s Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team offers a variety of hybrid virtual and in-person educational programs throughout the year, which are open to the campus community, alumni, parents, and families. These include the Dismantling Hate speaker series, in which activists discuss their work, the challenges facing marginalized communities, and ways that everyone can practice antiracism in their daily lives. The Antiracism Fund helps bring these activists to CC, as well as speakers such as global diversity consultant Rev. Dr. Jamie Washington for the 2023 Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.
CC’s Antiracist Book Club also saw about 500 participants this year, and the Antiracism Fund helped cover the cost of books for pickup on campus. The club takes place asynchronously: the college’s ADEI team provides the book selection and a discussion guide, and participants gather among their own groups and in their own communities. The Office of Alumni & Family Relations coordinates alumni and parent groups via Zoom; email alumni@coloradocollege.edu to learn more.
Student, Faculty, and Staff Professional Development
In the 2022-23 academic year, the Antiracism Fund allowed the Butler Center — CC’s student center for antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion — to create more paid opportunities for students to engage in antiracist initiatives and programming. Twenty students fulfilled work-study positions as interns, program assistants, mentors, and peer educators. In these roles, students participate in ongoing training with Butler Center staff, then provide support, workshops, and programming for other students across campus.
Twenty CC-affiliated people attended the 2023 National Conference on Race & Ethnicity in Higher Education, one of the largest representations from any school. NCORE is the leading and most comprehensive national forum on issues of race and ethnicity in the United States. At least one attendee from every staff and faculty division at CC was in attendance, along with three students.
With support from the Antiracism Fund, CC also launched its first round of Antiracism Community Engagement (ACE) grants in spring 2023. The grants, available to faculty, staff, and students, help offset the costs of participating in and attending ADEI professional development courses, workshops, or programs. In turn, grant awardees build their ADEI capacity and share their learnings with the broader campus community when they return. The first round of ACE grants saw nearly $15,000 distributed to five faculty members, one staff member, and two students.
“We have an amazing opportunity at CC because of how invested the entire community is in advancing antiracism. It is rare to find so much universal acceptance and eagerness to engage around these efforts,” Rodriguez said. “At the same time, that creates a demand that, even with [a three-person ADEI leadership team], we cannot meet consistently. Being able to expand the capacity for faculty, staff, and students to lead in their own areas not only allows us to meet that demand, but also creates greater investment and ownership of these initiatives.”
CC Summer Activist Institute
The CC Summer Activist Institute is a six-week, non-credit internship opportunity for students to engage in activist or advocacy work. Participants confront escalating surveillance and criminalization of BIPOC communities by collaborating directly with community-based organizations in the U.S. Southwest. Students learn skills required for social action work, consider antiracist approaches to community-engaged work, participate in discussions focused on conceptions of social change, and explore social action career possibilities.
The program began as a block class, then expanded to a summer sociology course taught by Professor Eric Popkin called the Summer Immigration Institute. In summer 2023, it evolved into its current iteration as the Summer Activist Institute, welcoming 18 students from CC and two students from peer school Carleton College. Students worked with community organizations in Denver; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Austin and El Paso, Texas, in three distinct content tracks: community organizing, immigrant detention work, and/or strategic research projects.
The Antiracism Fund has facilitated the expansion of the Summer Activist Institute to students from peer institutions, positioned CC and its students as leaders in advocacy education, and paved the way for the program’s future growth.
CC Mobile Arts and the CC Art Loan Program
CC Mobile Arts brings diverse multi-disciplinary arts experiences to campus and the public while uplifting underrepresented local artists. Its hub is a refurbished truck equipped with arts supplies, a PA system, projection, lighting, fold-out stage, and a solar-powered generator. Community members and local organizations can exchange ideas for programming; artists can book the truck for shows and workshops; and institutions can request visits from the truck to their sites — all staffed by current CC students. The Antiracism Fund supports the accessibility and inclusivity of CC Mobile Arts programs.
Launched in fall 2022 with support from the Antiracism Fund, CC’s student-run Art Loan program offers students, faculty, and staff the opportunity to live and interact with original artwork. The program is centered around the idea that art invites and fosters diverse perspectives — and it can serve as a starting point for conversations around decolonization, restorative justice, and acknowledgement of our shared histories.
Members of the campus community are invited to loan original paintings, prints, textiles, collages, drawings, and photographs from CC’s collection at no cost to display in their living areas, classrooms, or offices. To create a campus collection that more fully represents CC’s values, sense of place, and commitment to antiracism, the Art Loan program has prioritized the purchase and commissioning of artworks with a regional or local focus, and with special emphasis on BIPOC artist representation.
Agents of Care Museum Collections Project
Launched in 2023, the Agents of Care collections project highlights the often-unseen, behind-the-scenes work of caring for museum artworks and artifacts. Located at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, Agents of Care offers a firsthand view of the physical care, storage, and stewardship of cultural material. The project radically increases access to the collections for all members of the Colorado Springs community, while opening more space for college coursework and research projects. It also provides a pathway to engage the public around the decolonization of museum curatorial practices, and around the museum’s efforts to address gaps in underrepresented artists in its collections.
The museum cares for approximately 17,000 works of art and cultural materials, composed primarily of Native American (Pueblo, Plains, Plateau, and Great Basin cultures), Hispanic and Spanish Colonial, and 20th and 21st century American art. Agents of Care provides a sustained forum for the museum to engage communities who have a relationship to these cultural items, but have been historically marginalized from the Fine Arts Center.
The Antiracism Fund has helped support the development and ongoing operation of Agents of Care, as well as the hiring of student interns to implement programming, facilitate public experiences, and engage peers.
Creating an Antiracist Institution: It Takes All of Us
Rodriguez encourages all members of the CC community — including students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and families, and friends of the college — to participate in CC’s antiracism commitment by furthering their own education.
“Everyone can take some time to really understand what antiracism is and how it can impact their own lives on or off campus,” Rodriguez said. “This can be joining the CC community for one of the many hybrid programs or speakers that are offered, or it might mean reading along with the Antiracist Book Club or taking more tangible action to impact your local community. What are the issues of concern where you live? Unhoused individuals? Veterans’ services? Food insecurity? Volunteering at a community center?”
For an immediate next step, Rodriguez recommends Eddie Moore Jr.’s well-known 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge, which can be helpful in identifying specific goals and resources. Visit www.eddiemoorejr.com/21daychallenge to get started.
To learn more about CC’s commitment to antiracism, and to view the Implementation Plan, visit www.coloradocollege.edu/antiracism.