All six members of the Pitzer College community who gathered to speak at Benson Auditorium agreed on one thing: The best classes they’ve taken weren’t at any of the Claremont Colleges, but in prison.
On April 22, Pitzer hosted “Inside-Out as a Model for Constructive Dialogue,” a panel reflecting on 10 years of the college’s program, as a part of the Presidential Initiative on Constructive Dialogue. The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program involves Claremont faculty who teach courses at California Rehabilitation Center (CRC) in Norco, California, to both “outside” students from the 5Cs and “inside” incarcerated students.
The panel featured professors and former students of Inside-Out classes, who explored the liberatory nature of education inside prisons and discussed how to carry that transformative approach to community-building and pedagogy to the rest of Pitzer’s curriculum.
The Inside-Out model was developed by professor Lori Pompa at Temple University and was adopted by Pitzer in 2014. The Pathway-to-BA program, created in 2020, allows incarcerated students to earn a bachelor’s degree from Pitzer through Inside-Out classes.
The panel consisted of Pitzer professor of sociology & secular studies Phil Zuckerman, Professor of Organizational Studies Barbara Junisbai, former “inside” students Bernie Hernandez PZ ’23 and Danny Camarena PZ ’23 and “outside” students Sahar Dabirian PZ ’24 and Siya Bhola PZ ’25.
The moderator, professor of political studies Nigel Boyle, asked the panelists to comment on whether the Inside-Out model facilitates more candid conversations about contentious issues compared to traditional classroom models.
Teaching his first Inside-Out course this semester in secular studies, Zuckerman discussed how the inclusion of incarcerated students led to a wider diversity of religious beliefs in the classroom, therefore creating room for more interesting discussions.
While that may sound like a recipe for conflict, Zuckerman claimed that it was just the opposite.
“There was just a playfulness … and a certain grace that emerges in the inside classes,” Zuckerman said. “People don’t seem to be as on edge to offend each other. There’s a kind of openness to blunders and making mistakes … It’s the ideal setting to have a conversation about really personal and difficult things.”
Zuckerman felt that this willingness to risk saying the wrong thing has gotten more rare in Pitzer classrooms, a sentiment which several other panelists echoed.
“Students on campus are very pressured to be politically correct,” Bhola said. “The cancel culture is, I feel, a very real fear for Pitzer students. And inside the prison, the main difference is that people are more forgiving and open-minded … The discussion-based classes I’ve taken here have really taught me how to disagree with someone respectfully and be willing to hear the other perspectives.”
Pitzer President Strom Thacker created the Presidential Initiative on Constructive Dialogue in December due to concerns regarding students’ reluctance to discuss challenging topics. The initiative aims to program more difficult conversations on campus. Monday’s panel was the fourth and final event hosted by the initiative this semester.
“Community building and icebreakers are not just for the beginning of the semester. In the end, if we want to be … more connected humans, then maybe the material is not always the most important thing. And I feel like sometimes when I say that, it seems a little non-rigorous. But it turns out that the hardest part is to be a human being and let other people be human beings. That’s the most rigorous part of education.”
Hernandez also appreciated the forgiving space created by Inside-Out classes. Now the assistant program manager at Pitzer’s Institute for Global/Local Action & Study, he participated in the Pathway-to-BA program while incarcerated at CRC.
“In a male prison, there’s an air of toxic masculinity that happens in the prison … It doesn’t allow for so much of an open dialogue in a classroom setting that wouldn’t result in consequences,” Hernandez said.
Because of the Inside-Out classes, the inside students created their own guidelines for the group that would prevent conflicts outside of class.
“The outside students have to be there because they serve as a catalyst for how the results and the dynamic of the classroom becomes more progressive, how we create progress in this classroom, how we build stronger relationships behind the courage that we have with each other,” Hernandez said.
Another focus of the discussion was how to bring the elements that make the Inside-Out program so special — ideological diversity, open discussion and collaborative approach — to Pitzer’s other “outside” classes.
Dabirian discussed the impact of learning from the life experiences of the “inside” students. When learning about the AIDS crisis in a public health class, she was able to speak to other students who had firsthand accounts of its impacts on their communities. This people-first style made learning more impactful than the traditionally grades-focused approach of most elite institutions.
“For our final project, we are working on an intervention … for the school-to-prison pipeline,” Dabirian said. “In my group, there are three … inside students, we have some parents represented. So, what would they like to see for their children? We have outside students who, not too long ago, were in school. So we’re able to get this very holistic understanding from a lot of different perspectives.”
Professor Junisbai, who has taught many Inside-Out courses in organizational studies, expanded on how a similar pedagogical style can be applied to other classes, emphasizing that a learning community that embraces lived experiences is vital.
“Community building and icebreakers are not just for the beginning of the semester,” Junisbai said. “In the end, if we want to be … more connected humans, then maybe the material is not always the most important thing. And I feel like sometimes when I say that, it seems a little non-rigorous. But it turns out that the hardest part is to be a human being and let other people be human beings. That’s the most rigorous part of education.”
A brief Q&A followed the panel discussion. By this point, several audience members who had been involved with the Inside-Out program had gotten emotional listening to the panelists’ testimonies.
Hernandez acknowledged one attendee who had teared up.
“Her emotion just trickled down to me and it made me feel that sort of sense of being a humanitarian and being a humanitarian was difficult in prison,” Hernandez said.
Attendee Kenneth Butler PZ ’22, who helped establish Pitzer’s Inside-Out Pathway-to-BA program, stood up and addressed Hernandez and Camarena, the formerly incarcerated members of the panel and added his story to theirs.
“I’m not just a college student, I’m a first-generation college student,” Butler said. “And I think that’s what gets us inside guys so invested in this, that we have this opportunity to have our voices heard. And we’re not just throw away people … The students who take the Inside-Out classes are looking for something different and they find that magic and here we are now.”
Facebook Comments