As a new group on campus, the Wesleyan Prisoner Resource and Education Project (WesPREP) appreciates publicity. We want the whole community to know who we are and what we do. However, because our vision and goals are both ambitious and multi-faceted, it’s important to clear up any misunderstandings the recent Argus article about WesPREP may have created.
First, our long-term vision is for Connecticut State prisoners to have the opportunity to take college courses. As members of a community devoted to “liberation through liberal education” so aptly worded by President Bennet, WesPREP believes it’s important to open up learning opportunities we’ve been so privileged to receive to people who have been systematically denied those same opportunities. This is one of our founding goals. However, we have no misconceptions about the large obstacles such a program would face, nor do we expect it to be a quick, easy or guaranteed process. What we have learned from other universities who support college-in-prison programs is that years of groundwork go into making the program appropriate and successful. Thus, contrary to what the Argus article implied, WesPREP does not plan to implement a college-in-prison program at Wesleyan next spring.
In addition to that factual error, WesPREP wants to clearly distinguish between the volunteer project we are beginning this semester and the long-term college-in-prison program we envision. Wesleyan students and staff have turned in applications to the Connecticut Department of Corrections so that they may begin volunteering in Connecticut prisons. This volunteering will take the form of creating a workshop curriculum and leading that workshop in prison. Neither the Wesleyan student nor the prisoner will receive credit for this. We fear that the recent article may have given the misleading impression that Wesleyan students would be teaching courses to prisoners and that Wesleyan would grant credit for these courses. This is not the case. Rather, the student led workshops are intended to expose prisoners to new ideas and skills that are not otherwise available to them. It would be an insult to both a Wesleyan degree and to the intellectual ability of prisoners to think that students could effectively teach courses with the academic caliber found from Wesleyan professors.
At times, the article seemed to conflate the current volunteer program with our long-term goal of giving prisoners an opportunity to take college courses. WesPREP does not want the Wesleyan community to confuse the two, to see them as necessarily connected, or to imagine that Wesleyan has already begun tackling the broader, more difficult task of widening the scope of who can receive a Wesleyan education.
Thank you,
WesPREP
Leave a Reply