During the spring, students found an unusual way to cope with missing being on the Colorado College campus: re-creating the CC campus virtually in the video game Minecraft. Katie Wang ’22 was playing Minecraft with Eliza Merrall ’22, when she suggested bringing CC to the video game. Initially, their goal was to build the entire campus. They were quickly overwhelmed by the scope of their project. Recruiting fellow students made the plan more feasible and soon work was underway building Tutt Library.

Although skillsets differ, the video game is easy to learn. Arity Sherwood ’22 had never played before while Patrick McGinnis ’22 started playing in middle school. Over several days, they built the library shell, with Daniel Turevski ’22 also collaborating on the project. They used library floor plans scrounged from the library’s website along with Google images. They switched to Google maps to aid in establishing approximate size and dimensions. Noting a lack of interior photos of the library, Merrall said they did much from memory, admitting that she and her friends spend a lot of time in the library when on campus. They divided the parts into sections, with Merrall starting with the courtyard concrete, Sherwood taking on the red ribbon and panels, and Turevski building the library café Susie B’s. They consulted with each other over group Facetime calls when in doubt, joking about their “new way to do the Block Plan.”