Remembering Terry

The Terry Freitas Café dedication this afternoon was a lovely gathering—a moving tribute to a young man who touched the lives of many. I felt honored to spend time with Terry’s grandmother, mother, and other relatives, and I was moved by the remarks of Melina Selverston Scher. Terry, who graduated from UCSC in 1997, was working to protect the U’wa people in Colombia when he and two colleagues were kidnapped and murdered in 1999. Melina described how the U’wa have incorporated Terry into their oral tradition, remembering him as the man who kept oil companies from drilling on their land. Others have said it before, but Terry lived the values of so many UCSC students, working to make the world a better place. The Terry Freitas Award in Environmental Studies honors Terry’s legacy.