Stina Sieg/CPR News Colorado Mesa University kept its winter graduations small, only a few hundred guests spread out across a stadium that seats 8,000. Everyone who attended had to test negative for the virus beforehand. Last Friday evening, it was cold out at Grand Junction’s small airport and so dark you couldn’t see the imposing mesas just beyond the runway. Flood lights illuminated a sleek jet, all 58 feet of it, and a group from Colorado Mesa University walking its way. "This is pretty surreal, to be honest with you," said CMU Vice President John Marshall. "I mean, I guess no more surreal than anything else this year, right?"