Otterbein programs empower the incarcerated

Betterment Behind Bars: Through Otterbein's programs, people who are incarcerated are gaining intellectual freedom

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Otterbein University’s community is buzzing about prison reform.

Through initiatives both on and off campus, students and faculty alike are actively engaging with deeply rooted problems in our nation’s justice system.

“The concept of social justice is really strong among our campus culture and conversation, part of a larger campus tradition of social justice, equity and inclusion,” says Colette Masterson, director of Otterbein’s Center for Student Involvement.

Otterbein has multiple programs in place to foster this critical thought, discussion and social action.

Reading

The Common Book Program is the university’s first-year required reading experience. This year’s Common Book is Just Mercy, in which author Bryan Stevenson exposes troubling truths about the criminal justice system by recounting specific cases he’s taken.

“Our entire campus community is engaging with this topic throughout the course of the year, and we are facilitating programs and activities that open us to dialogue about societal issues,” says Masterson.

As part of the program, Stevenson visited Otterbein in October for a book discussion and Q&A on prison reform. The university also hosted public showings of relevant documentaries such as 13th and The Loving Story, which explore racial inequalities in prison and marriage.

Theater

Bridging the gap between Otterbein’s campus and central Ohio prisons is theater professor Jessie Glover, who essentially directs a theater company inside Marion Correctional Institute. Together with the nonprofit Healing Broken Circles, she has developed college-credit granting theater courses for the men there.

During fall semester, Glover and Elise Woods taught a course called “The Craft of Acting” to 15 men at Marion Correctional. Together, they engaged in dramatic analysis, acting, directing and transforming Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.

For their final project, each student took a play from Shakespeare’s canon and created an artistic response to it. This opportunity to create is what has left the biggest impact on these men’s lives, Glover says.

“Art can be freeing. It brings creative, intellectual freedom in the context where they don’t have physical freedom,” she says. “They can still work to expand their universe and contribute meaningfully to the lives of one another and the culture both inside and outside the prison.”

The side effect of enriching art experiences like this, Glover says, is changed human beings. The hope is that these changed lives will eventually form a self-sustaining company of actors that can create meaningful work for both inside and outside audiences.

“There are people in prison who are working hard to be agents in their own transformation and rehabilitation,” says Glover. “I see people who are grateful and are striving.”

Writing

English professor Shannon Lakanen has developed a two-credit course called Memoir Writing in Prisons, bringing opportunities for creativity and imagination to men and women in prison.

Authors Piper Kerman and Christopher Greathouse, who were already teaching in central Ohio prisons, reached out to Lakanen to build a syllabus that met Otterbein’s learning outcomes so their students could begin earning college credit.

“Through meeting with Piper about the class she was teaching, I asked if my beginning creative writing students could sit in and observe her class,” says Lakanen. “We had no idea what we were getting into, but we were inspired and invigorated by the students’ enthusiasm and eagerness to engage.”

Art can be freeing. It brings creative, intellectual freedom in the context where they don’t have physical freedom.

This marked the birth of the idea for a full-semester hybrid course offering. Now, Lakanen brings Otterbein students every other week to either Marion Correctional or the Ohio Reformatory for Women, where they sit in on Kerman’s and Greathouse’s class and discuss their writings with the students who are incarcerated. By fostering empathy and understanding, the course cultivates a sense of common humanity among the students.

“What we’re finding most valuable is the lesson in human kindness inherently embedded in this set-up: what we discover when we open ourselves to exploring our connections with each other,” says Lakanen.

The university is supportive of the continuation of the course this year and beyond. The vision, Lakanen says, is to add more courses in history or women’s, gender and sexuality studies, so the students who are incarcerated get more variety and meaningful opportunities to use their skills to impact the outside community.

Despite the brokenness evident in the criminal justice system today, “as citizens and as people, we have an opportunity to try and make things better,” says Otterbein Interim Provost Wendy Sherman Heckler.

These outreach and awareness programs are only the beginning of what is clearly a rapidly growing campus movement. As university students seek to view people who are in prison through the lens of their common humanity, both groups are empowered to create, collaborate and contribute meaningfully to the world.

Piper Kerman comes to Otterbein's lecture series

Piper Kerman, one of the course instructors in the prisons, will be speaking at Otterbein’s Vernon L. Pack Distinguished Lecture series in February.

Formerly incarcerated herself, Kerman has penned her experiences into a memoir, Orange is the New Black, now a hit Netflix TV show. Now a Westerville resident, Kerman advocates for nationwide criminal justice reform. Her talk will continue the conversation about injustice begun by visiting scholar Bryonn Bain last year in his lecture on the abolition of the punishment paradigm.

Kerman’s lecture is free to the public and will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 20 at 7 p.m. in the Fritsche Theatre at Cowan Hall.

Mikayla Klein is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.

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