For those inside, graduation is more than just a ceremony

A biweekly newsletter about the future of postsecondary education in prisons. Written by Open Campus national reporter Charlotte West.

Short on time? Here are the highlights:

• This issue of College Inside is all about graduation – both inside and out. Check out our profiles of four graduates from college programs in New York state prisons, copublished with Teen Vogue. And hear from one recent UCLA grad who started his educational journey at a prison in the desert and ended up on the stage at Comic-Con. 

• Prison officials in Illinois agreed to review the records of two men who went on hunger strikes earlier this month. The men say they would be eligible for immediate release if they were given the sentence credits they believe they are entitled to. We began reporting on this issue two months ago and have been following the story with our local partner WBEZ. 

• ICYMI: Morgan Godvin writes about the significant consequences that formerly incarcerated students might face if they decide to participate in protests like the ones that occurred across college campuses this spring. 

Beginnings and endings

People often think of graduation as an end to something — the end of your education or the carefree days of college. Alternatively, it can be the beginning of something — the start of your career, or adulthood. But after spending the last month visiting several college graduations in prisons, I think that the metaphor of a milestone seems more appropriate. 

Graduation is just one stop along the way to getting an education, which inside prisons can take a really long time. One graduate I talked to at Sing Sing — a men’s maximum security prison on the banks of the Hudson River — said that his associate’s degree from Mercy University was 30 years in the making. He entered prison in 1995, the year after the crime bill decimated federal funding for higher education inside. 

Graduation day is its own milestone, a chance for students inside to stop and reflect on where they’ve come from and where they’re going — and who they want to be — before they move on to the next stage. More than one of the graduates I spoke with said that education inside has allowed them to embrace their identities as students, scholars, and graduates. It’s a moment when their families can be proud of them, and they can be proud of themselves. 

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The different graduations all had distinct tones and tenors. I had the chance to attend ceremonies at two of New York’s three prisons for women. The women at Bedford Hills came out in style. Their energy was electrifying as current students and alumni of Marymount Manhattan College cheered on the graduates as they crossed the stage. The celebration across the street at Taconic was more subdued, with a big focus on what’s to come in the future. Jennifer Martinez, the valedictorian and commencement speaker, noted that all seven graduates will soon be going home. 

The Mercy University graduation at Sing Sing had a more serious tone. In April, one of the graduates, Paul Grant, died of a heart attack at the age of 37. His mother, Joyce Newell, attended the ceremony to accept his bachelor’s degree. All of the men carried red roses in memory of Paul as they accepted their own diplomas. 

Joel Jimenez, program director of Hudson Link for Higher Education, is an alumni of Mercy University's program at Sing Sing. He graduated in 2010 and went home five years later, going on to work for Hudson Link and pursuing graduate studies on the outside. He opted to have his MBA from Mercy conferred inside because he wanted to walk alongside the graduates in their educational journey.

As many of them begin to think about what life after prison looks like, he wanted them to be able to envision themselves in his shoes. “It was important for them to see me as a beacon of hope, as a visual representation of what their future can look like,” Joel told me. “Their hope for a better future is possible.”

It was amazing to be able to attend these events and celebrate with the graduates. But it also brought to the fore something else I often think about as I cover prison education. While it’s important to highlight the success stories, it’s equally important if not more so to continue to focus on the lack of access to higher education that so many people, particularly those serving long sentences, face behind bars. 

Stories that focus on “one exceptional person in one exceptional program” obscure and ignore the greater truths about education in prison, Michael Simmons recently wrote in an op-ed published in the Chicago Tribune. He was initially heartened by a Good Morning America story featuring his friend Benard McKinley, who took the LSAT behind bars and will start law school at Northwestern University in the fall. Michael was concerned because stories like Bernard’s are often presented as a miracle and “a lesson of the possibility of turning one singular life around through hard work and discipline.”

“The greater story, the greater truth, the reality, is that America’s prisons have thousands of men and women like Benard, each somehow already excelling, making much from little, overcoming a hundred hurdles and a thousand barriers and showing transformed lives of rehabilitation and promise,” Michael wrote. “But they lack the opportunities provided Benard and others (including me).”

That’s an important reminder to me as someone who spends my time thinking about what stories need to be told about education inside, and the importance of accountability journalism in shedding light on what’s really happening in our prisons and jails. 

Thanks for reading, and congrats to the class of 2024! And don’t miss this first-person essay by Benjamin Frandsen, about how education was his guide from prison to UCLA to Comic-Con.

Let’s connect

Please connect if you have story ideas or just want to share your experience with prison education programs as a student or educator. You can always reach me at [email protected] or on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram. To reach me via snail mail, you can write to: Open Campus, 2460 17th Avenue #1015, Santa Cruz, CA 95062.

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