Behind a fortress wall and razor wire and a few feet away from California’s death row, students at one of the country’s most unique colleges discuss the 9/11 attacks and issues of morality, identity and nationalism.
Instructor Douglas Arnwine hands back papers with comments to his incarcerated students during a Mount Tamalpais College English class called Cosmopolitan Fictions at San Quentin State Prison on April 12, 2022, in San Quentin, Calif. The community college, the first in California with a campus inside a prison, is the latest addition to San Quentin's numerous rehabilitation programs that have made it a desired destination for inmates throughout the state.
Named for a mountain near the prison, the college was accredited in January after a 19-member commission from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges determined the extension program based at San Quentin for more than two decades was providing high-quality education.“This is a profound step forward in prison education,” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, the umbrella organization for all U.S. higher education institutions.
“I wish I had learned this way coming up; instead I was in special ed my whole life,” said 49-year-old Derry Brown, whose English 101 class “Cosmopolitan Fictions,” was discussing “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” a novel by Mohsin Hamid. “Very often in the field of higher ed, people will look at educational programs in prisons and they’ll say, ‘Well, that’s a program or project. It’s not a school.’ Our hope is that by being an independent, accredited, liberal arts college that operates in a prison we make it more difficult for people to overlook those inside and we help them imagine our students differently,” Lewen said.
“In other institutions, we were used to talking about gang activity, violence, knives, drugs, the next riot,” he said. He now works as an advancement associate helping the college’s communications and fundraising departments. “There’s also moments of success when a student realizes that they’ve crafted a really elegant paragraph in their essay, and they’ve made some interesting points. As with any student, regardless of where you are, you can see how that helps them build confidence,” Arwine said.
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