To the Editors of the Wesleyan Argus,
Your editorial published on January 30, titled “Prison Experiment Is a Worthy One,” (Volume CXLV, Number 1) was well-intentioned but horribly misguided. Instead of providing support for an important and worthwhile campus initiative, you instead propagated a hateful, ignorant attitude toward incarcerated individuals. On top of that, you revealed yourselves to be navel-gazing and self-important, as well as wholly incapable of throwing your weight behind a project that, for once, does not place Wesleyan students on a golden pedestal. I’ll spare you an indictment of the egregious cartoon you published alongside your editorial, which single-handedly managed to be wildly offensive and casually align prisoners with Nazism (for those who missed this allusion: check out the swastika forehead tattoo). For these reasons, among others that I will outline shortly, it makes me deeply uncomfortable that you are in any position to represent Wesleyan’s student body.
First of all, the project (not “experiment”) at the center of your editorial is not called the “Prison Solidarity Project.” It is the Prisoner Solidarity Project (PSP). Take a moment to reflect on the great disparity between these two meanings. Additionally, the fact that you published the name of the project incorrectly suggests that you did not even read the 1.5-page proposal issued by the PSP at last Monday’s symposium. Had you done the bare minimum required of any middling (perhaps aspiring?) journalist, you would have been able to correct your own glaring inconsistencies before allowing them to go to press.
To address the meat of your argument point by point, let me begin by repeating a question you pose as one of your “ethical concerns:” “would Wesleyan want to sanction a program that provides inmates with such enormous benefits?”
This question essentially asks whether or not incarcerated individuals are deserving of a college-level education. (What an “ethical concern” indeed!) You suggest that excluding the prison population from educational opportunities represents an ethical stance. Given the demographics of the prison population, it is safe to say that certain populations (poor, male, black, Latino) are systematically filtered into the prison system. You are therefore implying that these populations–both in and outside of prison–are undeserving of the same educational opportunities available to those enrolled in an institution like Wesleyan (which, coincidentally, happens to be private, expensive, and around 70 percent white).
Adding insult to injury, you later state–with the naïve goodwill of a 17th century missionary–that you believe “the program will have a much greater impact if students, not just professors, get a chance to teach the incarcerated.” (“Get a chance” – really? Is prison a theme park?) Why do you believe this? What makes you think Wesleyan undergraduates are in any way qualified to teach college courses? Either way you slice it, this intimation is a slap in the face to Wesleyan professors, and an insult to those incarcerated.
The PSP’s proposal to create a Center for Prison Education would further Wesleyan’s dual commitments to civic engagement and progressive education. Shame on you, Wesleyan Argus, for your painfully counter-productive contribution to this discussion.
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