Politics

BETWEEN BARS | Just Visiting

By |

This week is National Prison Visiting Week, a new initiative led by the VERA Institute of Justice to open up prison facilities to local community members to come in and interact with inmates and correctional officers. The “opening” of the prisons provides the public an opportunity to see the effect that a local institution has on people, many who eventually reenter society (studies estimate 95% nationwide). It also seeks, I predict, to demonstrate that mass incarceration is not an abstract phenomenon but a condition that is as local as state prisons and county jails, which make up the bulk of the nation’s incarcerated. VERA’s president points out that it is in a community’s interest to know the people it sends behind bars, for they will not be hidden forever:
Prisons and jails, and the 2.2 million people in them, have been literally walled off from what was previously a deeply neglectful public. But no more.

Life

BETWEEN BARS | Learning Chinese

By |

This week at Auburn I taught Chinese. It came as a surprise, really: when we checked our belongings in at the front desk I noticed a fellow tutor holding what looked like worksheets that were written in Chinese. She explained to me that she taught a small Chinese class and invited me to join her in administering a quiz for her class. It turns out the entire Chinese class that night consisted of three people. The five of us sat around a single table in a classroom filled with other students who were there for study hall.

Life

BETWEEN BARS | When I’m 36

By |

I’ll be 36 years old when he gets out of prison in 2030. It occurred to me that scientists have been saying that by that year all the polar ice caps will have melted. Across the street from Auburn, there’s a small gas station with a convenience store that sells Marlboros and sodas and lottery tickets and bite-sized snacks. Upon my first visit, I found it odd that a string of local businesses would situate themselves so near to a maximum-security facility. I guess Auburn prison has been around for so long that it’s merged into the landscape like a wall in the city.

Politics

BETWEEN BARS | Unlock the Vote

By |

The one-hour car ride back to Cornell from Auburn Prison is a time for tutors to talk about how the night went. On my last trip, a few of the tutors in my car observed a voting poster inside a classroom. They found its presence ironic: after all, felons can’t vote. According to New York state law, no one who is currently incarcerated or on parole can vote. With the election less than two months away, efforts to register voters are ever present on Cornell’s campus.

Politics

BETWEEN BARS | Out of Necessity

By |

When the cart rolled into the classroom, several of the students immediately left their seats and walked over. I followed suit. It was a steel double-sided cart, the kind that librarians use for shelving books. A few titles caught my eye: a complete encyclopedia of African American culture, Drown by Junot Díaz, and Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The students and I shuffled about the cart to get a closer look at the selection.

Politics

BETWEEN BARS | Inside Maximum Security

By |

Auburn Correctional Facility is less than an hour’s drive directly north of Ithaca, in a city whose population is comparable to that of total enrollment at Cornell. Sitting atop one of the Finger Lakes, it looks like any other town to pass by on the rolling hills of Upstate New York. But if obscurity has different degrees, Auburn is not a place without a name. It’s where Underground Railroad heroine Harriet Tubman lived and died. It’s also home to one of the nation’s oldest prisons, one that pioneered the practice—the “Auburn system”—of daytime penal labor followed by solitary confinement at night, all under enforced silence.

Entertainment

WELCOME TO THE ZOO | Guantanamo Bay

By |

With an open mind and two sides of the story, you’re bound to learn something new. Welcome to the zoo! This is a blog where both the Republican and Democrat viewpoints are represented. The blog is not meant to sway you either way necessarily, just present both sides of the story. You may not agree with the whole article, but hey, you’re likely to agree with half!