Missive From Prison: A Love Story

I am a Wesleyan undergraduate student. I am also incarcerated. I am one of 42 enrolled students in the Center for Prison Education program hosted at the maximum security male prison in Cheshire.

How does that make you feel? Whether you are a student, faculty member, or alumnus of Wesleyan, reading this article, how does hearing this make you feel? Are you proud? Proud, perhaps, because your elite educational institution offers people (like me) an opportunity to gain a world-class education? (There’s no shame in monikers like “elite,” at least not in this context). Are you uncomfortable, perhaps, even disgusted? Does the idea of sharing your lauded institutional accolades with convicted felons somehow repulse you (even if, deep down inside, you believe that it shouldn’t)?

Emotions such as these are complex and, frankly, I don’t think they’re anything to be ashamed of. After all, we’re not robots (you or I). In spite of this great Artificial Intelligence revolution fulminating all around us, we are still emotional creatures. Thinking, feeling… caring. Perhaps it is a sign of our humanity that we still feel competing emotions like pride and disgust simultaneously.

And what of love?

What if I told you that I love Wesleyan? What if I said that the Center for Prison Education gives my life purpose and meaning? Does that change the calculus? This is not a put-on. This is not some meager attempt to ingratiate myself or my peers to the influential (or uninitiated).

This is a love story.

Love for education and the academic experience. The kind of love that only this experience could give me. Don’t be mistaken, prison is a damnable place. Prison is everything you’ve heard but worse, because the damages are not always overt, as depicted in popular media. Rather, the damage done is internal and insidious, in ways I won’t begin to reflect on in this missive. Yet, education is a shining light. Education is a shield that protects me and my student-peers.

I’ve had the gift of meeting and interacting with myriad professors and countless more undergraduate TA’s from nearby Middletown. I’ve been swaddled in the warm (albeit metaphorical) embrace of our beloved staff, the ones who almost singularly make this all possible. And I am grateful for every moment of it, in ways that only a love letter could begin to do justice.

As another Autumn semester is imminent, as new students and faculty move in, and old ones get reacquainted or depart, take a moment to speculate on what this new term may bring. More importantly, reflect on the opportunity that lay before each of you, because I do. I think about what being a Wesleyan student means everyday. I take pride in my education and the immensity of this opportunity. You should too…

Only a fool would do otherwise. Damn the fools.

With Love,

Ian T. Cooke
Inmate #340812