As it’s been sitting in about the same spot for roughly more than 100 centuries, a few Cascadia Community College students and at least one of their professors figured maybe it had, at a minimum, earned the right to stay in one piece.

Earlier this month, as students and faculty in a politics and the environment class noticed that a large boulder was being jack hammered into pieces, they sprang into action to save what they consider a very special rock.

The boulder is thought to be a glacial erratic, a large rock transported and left behind by the movement of glaciers.

“It likely originated in northern Washington or British Columbia, and was deposited here about 12,000 years ago,” said John Van Leer, one of the two teachers of the combined environmental/politics class.

“Ever since the college opened 10 years ago, it’s been a teaching tool for a variety of classes and has become a place for reflection and contemplation by students and faculty alike,” Van Leer continued.

Unfortunately, these days it sits in an area that is being cleared to develop a sports and activity field on campus.

Every quarter, Cascadia offers two or three “learning community classes,” combined courses covering what might seem to be two somewhat disparate topics.

With each an expert in a different discipline, learning community courses are taught by two staffers. The noisy task of breaking the seemingly too-big-to-move rock into more easily transportable pieces already had begun when the learning community class taught by Van Leer and Nader Nazemi was just starting.

Unaware of the plans to remove their special rock, students and faculty in the class wasted little time in going to the work site to find out what was happening.

As they approached the rock, the jack hammering stopped. Following a brief conversation with the workers, some in the group decided to seize the opportunity to sit on the boulder and try to save it from further destruction.

Andy Howe is one of the students in the class.

“I don’t think any of us knew exactly what we should do, but as a few more people joined us, we realized we were gaining momentum and we had an opportunity to try to change the direction of what was happening,” Howe said.

After a short time, campus officials came to talk with the growing group gathering around and atop the rock. They explained the planned use of the land surrounding the glacial erratic and apologized for not being more aware of the rock’s significance.

“There couldn’t have been a more perfect class to be having when this work occurred,” said Van Leer. “Saving the erratic wasn’t just about learning the science of something, or the ethics of something, or the politics of something, it was all of those things together.”

In the end, officials offered to discontinue the jack hammering and, in response to a suggestion from one of the students, move the rest of the rock — about two-thirds of the original — into a buffer zone around the campus wetlands where it will never again be threatened by future development.

“It was a really interesting experience. We just finished a section in our textbook about ethics and policy making. Both of them were at play in this situation and we saw that lesson right in front of us,” said student Jesse West.

“The officials were very understanding and we achieved the best outcome we could have hoped for,” said Ameer Ghassemi, another student in the class.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the one thing they all remember from this entire learning community 20 years from now,” said Van Leer.