The Muhlenberg College Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program celebrated its spring semester on Wednesday, April 22 at the Lehigh County Jail. The program, which began in 2017, offers courses taught by Muhlenberg faculty inside the jail in which Muhlenberg students and inmates collaborate and learn together. The event began with students displaying their work and culminated with a certificate presentation.
Dr. Kate Richmond, co-director of the program, reflected on the importance of this experience.
“The class started with the idea of bringing together college students with students who are incarcerated for a semester long college experience so that they get to understand each other not just through a book, but through the combination of a book in dialogue with lived experience. And what makes that so unique, is that when you’re able to pair book knowledge with lived experience, there’s no way you don’t see the stakes at hand. There’s no way that you don’t want to care and do something about it.”
Fellow co-director, Professor Jess Denke, sees the positive impact on the community at large.
“This program is also increasingly in connection with support services through the city of Allentown and our Allentown Works programming that will be starting this May and so this program is the beginning of a transformation of our community hopefully so that our folks who are currently incarcerated will have better opportunities in the future.”
The two courses offered this semester were Corrections & American Society taught by the co-directors and Prison Stories In Literature & Film taught by Dr. Eileen McEwan and Dr. Paul McEwan.
The students reflected on the importance of the program and the impact it has had on their lives.
“My name is John, I’m an inside student with the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. I think that this is one of the most beneficial programs we can have inside the Lehigh County Jail. It takes that separation from being an inmate verses a college student. It helps reconnect us with civilization and the feeling of being a human and it gives us a lot of hope about getting out and doing the right thing.”
“My name’s Ava, I’m a junior at Muhlenberg. I feel like I got a lot out of this class mostly because it’s mostly just discussion based so I get to learn about all of the inside student’s experiences and learn about their lives and it’s really just learning their shared humanity and that they’re still a part of this community as are we. And we’re all just students, there’s no hierarchy of the outside student and the inside students, we’re all students and we’re learning from each other.”
“Hello, my name is Dajaun and the reason I took this inside out class is because I felt that it would give me the perfect opportunity to further educate myself and to get to learn new perspectives and also to gain cognitive development within my brain being as though I had to teach myself how to read and write when I came to jail because I didn’t know how to properly read or write so that’s another reason why I took the class. I also took the class because I felt it was something that was meant for me to do. Not only do I want to educate myself, I also want to be able to educate others who are in either a similar or worse predicament than me when I come home and I’ll be able to help rehabilitate the youth and rehabilitate others that are my age and older.”
“Hi, my name is Adam, I’m a sophomore at Muhlenberg College. This is the last day of my Inside-Out class. This has been an amazing experience that I would recommend to literally anybody. It’s just been truly eye-opening spending time with people both inside and outside and just getting to know them making connections, breaking down those barriers. It’s a really moving and impactful experience that I think everybody should have and I would highly, highly recommend it.”
“My name is JB and I really liked this whole inside out program. It seemed like something I connected with. Every time I came to class it was very comforting and I did learn a lot, as far as other institutions, how unfair the justice system was. This was an incredible class for me I can say that. I’m not one who loves to read but I took it upon myself to learn more so I read and I read and I got a lot of information out of this group.”
“I’m Maggie and I’m a senior at Muhlenberg and I really took this class because it’s a very unique opportunity that you don’t really get anywhere else and an opportunity to kind of work directly with people that you might not necessarily ever get to interact with and learn things about yourself and through this experience I’ve gotten to approach learning in a different way and I gained so many new perspectives just from getting to talk and connect with everyone”
“Hello, my name is Scott. I’m currently incarcerated at Lehigh County Jail and this opportunity has been tremendous. It’s given us a voice. It’s helped educate us and to help us educate people who we thought we had nothing in common with and it’s an opportunity that you know has been extremely beneficial and it’s a blessing. You know, I want to say thank you to the program. Thank you to Muhlenberg University. Thank you to my professors and thank you to my classmates. You know, they don’t judge. They’re here to help us. And you know, it’s just made life easier and life better.”
Sonny, a senior at Muhlenberg, shared her thoughts.
“This Inside-Out class has been probably one of the most formative experiences of my entire life, because it is so cool to be able to sit down in a room without any barriers and we’re looking at people where I don’t know your story and you don’t know mine and we’re learning how we think and how we respond to different things and really just getting to know people on a very human level that does not happen in many other places where social dynamics or labels or titles get in the way of a lot of stuff. There are some people inside this jail, some of the inside students in our classroom that have put in a tremendous amount of work and are so passionate about bettering their situation and other people’s situations and it’s just really unique to see.”
“Hey guys, how are you doing, my name is Walter. I’m an inside student in the Inside-Out Program and I just want to say thank you and how much I really appreciate this program. This is really conducive to my time being here. It definitely gave me something to look forward to and honestly, I would love to do it again man, I would love to do it again.”
To conclude the program, Dr. Richmond asked the students to participate in one last activity.
“We’re going to get into one big circle and you have to, with your loudest voice, just say one word that you’re leaving with today. When the circle ends, that closes our time together.”
The students shared a variety of words including community, transformative, powerful, thankful and of course, understanding.
