Probing Cosmic Evolution: Long Term Analysis of 1ES 1215$+$303

In February of 2014 (MJD 56696), the blazar 1ES 1215$+$303 underwent a flare reaching a peak flux of 2.4 Crab at energies over 100 GeV. To examine the spectral properties of the source, an energy spectrum was reconstructed for the night of the flare, along with a long-term light curve to examine the flux of very-high-energy gamma rays over the entirety of observations between 2008 and 2016. The results suggest the source underwent spectral hardening, with a spectral index of 3.02 \textpm 0.07 for the night of the flare and 3.47 \textpm 0.15 during the low state of the source. I will share the VERITAS results in the context of what it means to the gamma-ray production at work within the source, and discuss the implications of these results for future work to constrain the extragalactic background light.