Dispatch from FLC’s newly sponsored suicide prevention training.

Throughout my life, I have always introduced myself as a softball player. It has been my identity, the thing I fell back on when, on the first day of class, the teachers ask to tell them and your fellow classmates something about yourself. But come the middle of May, I will no longer be able to call myself a softball player because I am graduating with my degree in journalism and multimedia studies with two minors in psychology and marketing. 

Sometimes puff but mostly rough, it seems these days that everything’s falling apart. Turn on the news, browse the web, or scroll through twitter and you’re sure to come across media that fills your brain with hazardous waste, leaves you feeling disenfranchised and as an apparant antidote offers nothing but vapid platitudes. Some might say it’s a shame, many will ignore it but I say it's a God-damned travesty, or as I will refer to it in this column, a God-damned Travis D. 

Based on the decision made by The Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, sporting events that are held outside at Fort Lewis College are now allowed to have fans in attendance while following local health guidelines, Brandon Leimbach, FLC athletic director, said. 

The mood was high-spirited and welcoming as several of Fort Lewis College’s women filed into the Student Life Center building with their carabiners attached, chalk dusted on their hands and climbing shoes on to participate in FLC’s Womxn Take Over the Wall event. 

The event, orchestrated through a collaboration between Outdoor Pursuits and fairly new student organization, Keeping Women Wild, was the kick-off event for a month of events in celebration of Women’s History Month, Ryanne Clough, a FLC adventure education and business administration double-major who is a Student Outdoor Leader for Outdoor Pursuits, said.

In 2020 there were a lot of things that I was afraid of, like testing positive for COVID-19 and losing friends and family. In 2021, both of these things happened.  This is a journal about being exposed, experiencing symptoms, testing positive for COVID-19 and how my view of Fort Lewis College, San Juan Basin Public Health and my community changed.

When Fort Lewis College made its decision to bring students back to campus for the fall 2020 semester during the COVID-19 pandemic, a plethora of considerations, new policies, and a reckoning of resources followed, trying to make the campus return as safe and manageable as possible.