June 24, 2026

When Zee Camp ’26, from Portland, OR, was in high school, they were an intense math-science nerd. They took two full years of college-level Calculus and Advanced Placement Physics and joined lots of highly mechanical extracurricular activities, like technical theater and competitive robotics. They didn’t take a single art class. 

“Through most of high school I thought that I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer,” But as senior year rolled around, they said, “I woke up one day and thought, I don’t think I ever really wanted to be an engineer. I think someone just asked me that, and it felt like an easy answer.” 

When looking for a college, Camp had made a list to try to narrow down their options. 

They went to a high school with 2,400 students and large class sizes. They were looking for a smaller college with a low student-faculty ratio. In addition, their mom had attended a liberal arts school and enjoyed the variety of courses she took, something that was also important to him.  He had also spent the last twelve years studying Japanese and aimed to continue into college. 

“So I was looking for small liberal arts schools with a rigorous Japanese program, and that narrowed down the options a lot,” they said.  

Camp is a wheelchair user. He wanted to make sure the college he would attend would meet his access needs. 

“I toured a lot of colleges, and a lot of them are on steep hills,” said Camp. “Being disabled, I wanted to know that I could live independently 3,000 miles from home but with a safety net. 

Independence is important to me.” 

After touring Bennington, Camp found the hilly campus to be manageable. Even in a historical campus; staff and faculty worked with Zee to meet him where he was at. Plus, they learned, a friend of a friend  was planning to attend Bennington, too. 

The first few days at Bennington were nervewracking. 

“I had a lot of strange anxiety. I find myself to be awkward in new social situations, but it was exciting to see a lot of people who looked like me in terms of queerness,” said Camp. 

“There’s no roadmap as a college student, but there is really no roadmap to be a college student as a wheelchair user.” 

Camp muses on experiences of being a disabled college student. He finds being disabled to be a constant adventure of adaptations and bargaining. “I think that is something I have learned a lot throughout my four years at college. I am a fiercely independent person… but there is also no shame in asking for help.” 

They found their first day of classes to be quite exciting. He reflected on feeling like high school was a vapid existence of tests and homework and was delighted in the love of learning he experienced with his peers in his first college class. He ended the day with the impression, “ah yes, we are all going to love learning together.”

His first class was Social Issues in Japan Through Online News with faculty member Ikuko Yoshida. With Camp’s years of Japanese education, he tested into the advanced Japanese course. Each fall term, Yoshida tailors the courses to the students' varying interests, teaching subjects from translation to art history. In the spring, Camp and other advanced students would take the Advanced Projects class. Alongside being his faculty member, Yoshida was also his advisor for three years. In bi-weekly meetings they would talk about everything from classwork to post- graduation plans, to weekend activities.  

“She is so incredibly sweet and caring for all students,” Camp said. “She was always worried that we hadn’t eaten breakfast, so she brought a basket of snacks to morning classes.”

During their first term, they took a Ceramics class, Mold Making and Slipcasting, with faculty member Yoko Inoue. 

“It was a weird entry point into the field,” Camp said. “Slip casting is much different than typical ceramics. It involves working with a liquid form of clay, slip, and pouring it into molds in order to achieve thin, often hollow objects.” Camp said that he “found the process to be frustrating the whole time. Fascinating, but deeply frustrating. But I fell in love with being in the ceramics studio.” 

Their academic Plan combined Japanese, Ceramics, and Translation, which they studied with faculty member in Translation Mariam Rahmani. 

“I am interested in structures: ceramic and grammatical structures,” said Camp. “I understand how structures are built and how they fail.” 

Anina Major was Camp’s faculty sponsor for their senior work. 

“I value the way she talks about work. She’s good at breaking daunting things down into smaller pieces and making them feel more manageable,” said Camp. “And I have grappled with questions like ‘do I need to make work about my disability? Do I want to? What does that look like?’ We talked it through in a way that makes sense, and she allowed me to come to the conclusion on my own with her guidance.” 

Post graduation, Camp is looking forward to getting his Japanese medical translators license, and hopefully getting the rights to continue their literary translations. 

“I am pretty happy with my undergraduate degree,” said Camp. “We’ll see where it takes me.”