KAR Robison, a CALS junior majoring in environment and sustainability, passed away unexpectedly in December, 2020. They were 41. KAR was involved in several projects and was a participant in the Spring Seminar. In a memorial tribute to KAR, Gerard Aching reflects on their involvement in community projects and their commitment to social justice initiatives:
KARS’s quote and portrait were included in a 2019 Cornell public art project titled ‘What kind of a world do you want to live in?’ Artwork by John Noltner/2019 Sevin Fellow of the West Campus House System. (View Noltner's portfolio: https://apomm.net/)
"In the Seminar, my colleagues and I witnessed one of KAR’s impressive talents: the ability to come up with ambitious and original community-engaged projects. These projects consistently had two valuable features. The first was their penchant for understanding and promoting relations between scholars, students and community partners in very stimulating and imaginative ways. The second was their insistence on respectful and mutually beneficial working relationships with community partners from day one."
Not only a passionate activist and curious scholar, KAR was also an artist and interested in music. "KAR was never without significant projects or ideas for new ones," said Aching. "I learned from KAR and feel honored to have been an interlocutor in areas of mutual interest and curiosity. We will be deprived of the results of KAR’s great potential to realize richly imaginative and socially beneficial work that they demonstrated while they were among us."
Read more tributes to KAR Robison in the article published by CALS.
Read Gerard Aching's full tribute, here.
