CA Hosts Colorado Diversity Network 2025 Student Summit

Colorado Academy was host to the Colorado Diversity Network (CDN) 2025 Student Summit on December 5, welcoming student and faculty representatives from CA as well as peer schools for keynotes and workshops built around the theme, “Unity & Pride: Empowering Youth, Strengthening Allyship.” Attendees from CA, Denver Academy, Denver Waldorf School, International School of Denver, Kent Denver School, and Vail Mountain School heard from Denver City Councilman Darrell Watson, District 9, as well as David Duffield, a Denver-based historian and co-founder of the Colorado LGBTQ History Project with The Center on Colfax.

Duffield kicked off the day of collaboration in CA’s Knowles Lecture Hall, where he told the audience of nearly 100 students and teachers, “This Summit was created for you—high school students who care about understanding people’s experience, being better allies, and doing something real with what you’ve learned.”

The 2025 Student Summit was organized around three big ideas, according to Duffield: consciousness, community, and change. “Consciousness is about waking up, learning history, and figuring out what’s really going on with LGBTQ people right now—not just what you see in the headlines. Community is about finding your people and your resources, meeting others, learning from those with experience, and building support systems, so that you’re not doing this alone. And change is about what happens after today: how you use your voice, what you design, and what you commit to.”

In his work as a historian and educator, Duffield studies LGBTQ history and movements around the world. The details differ in every time period and location, he explained, “but the pattern is weirdly the same. Queer people get pushed out of safety; they get pushed out of laws that protect them, and they get pushed out of the story. Governments punish or ignore them. Communities say, ‘You don’t belong here.’”

But across countries and decades, he said, “People respond in very similar ways. They create art. They build safe spaces. They teach each other and they organize. If I had to turn that into one line, it would be this: Questions beget art, art precedes activism, and activism begets laws, which teach people how to change.”

Students and adult guests then broke into smaller groups to participate in several workshop sessions, including LGBTQ History and Heritage in Colorado, LGBTQ+ Resilience and Wellness in the Face of Adversity, and Know Your Rights.

After a break for lunch, attendees came together again to hear from Councilman Watson about his experience as the first openly gay, Black man to be elected to the Denver City Council in its 100-year history. “What has always been most important for me, even more important than coming out, is rooting myself in the communities where I live and elevating the opportunity for change.”

From organizing a gay pride parade in Lincoln, Neb., to becoming involved with advocacy and education near Denver’s Five Points neighborhood, where he settled after leaving Nebraska, to finally leading a community policing task force and being elected to City Council, Watson has always focused on “finding ways to elevate marginalized communities, and then taking a stand and letting your voice be heard.”

“As young leaders and folks within this community, we have the power to create change; we have the power to lean into the systems that oftentimes are used against us and to change those systems to make sure that we’re not only empowering but also celebrating our lives and all those who will follow you,” Watson said.

He offered the example of one of his first initiatives in office: advocating for safe retirement housing options for queer and gender-nonconforming people. “Often, these folks may have to live separately from their partners or go back into the closet when they retire,” Watson explained. In the end, he was able to work with colleagues to enact zoning changes that would allow the creation of LGBTQ-friendly elder housing.

However, he told the audience of students and educators, “Today we have a federal government that’s attempting to roll back a lot of the work that we have done over the past several decades, and your generation is going to face things that my generation thought we dismantled. You all need to be ready to fight some battles that we thought were over.”

When students posed questions about how to effect change and make their voices heard, Watson was empathetic and enthusiastic as he told them, “Creating change may begin with one person, but I have always found that elevating the good works of others already involved can better sustain long-term outcomes.”

He also discussed the idea of “privilege” and the benefits that sometimes come with this embattled notion. “I had the privilege of growing up in a family and with a mother who believed in knocking on doors and being involved in politics, even when I was a kid. And if we don’t lean into the privilege we have, then we lose it. If you look at the history of our communities, it was often people taking advantage of their own power and protection to start revolutions.”

Still, according to Watson, “As someone who loves people and leads with love, I don’t tell folks how to live their lives. Keep loving and being there for others, and change will come.”