Ken Burns Presents: College Behind Bars: A Film by Lynn Novick and Produced by Sarah.. (2019)

[bunniefuu]

[Thunder]

[crickets chirping]

[indistinct radio chatter]

[metal doors shutting]

[thunder]

man: I've been incarcerated for years,

and from my experience, I can tell you

prison is here to punish us.

Um, it's here to warehouse us,

but it's not about, um, rehabilitating.

It's not about creating productive beings.

It just isn't.

[Thunder]

♪

[Thunder]

[rain falling]

♪

[Radio chirps]

[indistinct chatter]

man: "call me ishmael.

"Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--

"having little or no money in my purse,

"and nothing in particular to interest me on the shore,

"I thought I would sail about a little

and see the watery part of the world."

Different man: I'm taking "moby-d*ck."

That's a really interesting class.

The whole first paragraph we had to memorize,

and each one of us had to recite

in front of the rest of the class.

You would see another guy in the class in the yard,

and we would be like, "hey, call me ishmael,"

and he would go through it, and I would go through it,

and we'd point out where we didn't match.

Different man: "I thought I would sail about a little

"and see the watery part of the world

"is a way I have regulating the s-spleen

and drying--and, uh-- uh...regulating the--"

different man: "it is a way I have of driving

off the spleen and regulating the circulation."

Different man: "whenever I find myself growing grim

"about the mouth; whenever it is

"a damp, drizzly november in my soul;

"whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing

"before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear

"of every funeral I meet;

"and especially whenever my hypos get such

"an upper hand of me, that it requires

"a strong moral principle to prevent me

"from deliberately stepping out into the streets

"and methodically knocking people's hats

"off their heads, then, I account it high time

to get to sea as soon as I can."

Professor: I really feel that.

[Applause]

[radio chatter]

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

Man on p.a.: Attention, all inmates.

Line up on the white line for the count.

[Indistinct chatter]

man: we've got to remember that the crisis

that the united states was in in the early s

was a global economic crisis,

and that crisis led to the rise

of all kinds of anti-democratic regimes

all over the world,

and what roosevelt's concerned about

is the possibility that this could happen

in the united states.

Different man: we are not a part of the prison system.

We are a college who happens to have classes

inside of prison.

Unlike other schools, it has bars,

it has gates that close and open,

it has doors that must be locked.

Although we say, "school building,"

it's not a traditional school building,

although what we do inside the school building

is traditional college work.

Man: one of the things that's always been most important

to us is the institution's adamance that these students,

the incarcerated students,

are no different from any other,

and in many ways, bpi is simply

a very simple kind of experiment,

which is what happens when we provide

the kinds of education that typically

in the united states are only afforded

to the children of the lucky

or the entitled or the rich to others?

♪

♪

♪

Man: I do not get rid of any draft,

so you can see there's a lot of rewrites.

I spend most of my time in the school building.

If I'm in this cell, more often than not,

I'm either reading, writing, or sleeping.

This is--this is a cell.

This is not a place that I live in.

Well, as you can see, there's no pictures

or posters on the wall at all.

I keep this bare.

I don't forget that this is prison,

even when I'm working because

at some point, an officer is gonna walk pass this cell.

I'm gonna hear the keys jangling on his belt,

and he might stop by that cell and look

through that window there,

and so I don't forget, you never forget.

Man: I do most of my work at night because it's a dorm,

it's an open space.

There're a lot of distractions, you know,

guys walking around, talking loudly.

It's not always easy to focus on schoolwork.

So I may start a lot of my work maybe

at : at night and go to bed

:, : in the morning.

I try to be as organized as I can be

in such a small space, so I utilize, like,

little folders and things,

miscellaneous papers, papers for every semester,

for every class for the last years.

I came in when I was .

I got my ged on rikers island in .

A friend of mine forced me to the program,

which probably the kindest, most loving thing anyone

has ever done for me was force me

to apply to this program.

Man: it's all textbooks-- math, science,

and then of course spanish is invading my life,

so that's my--for the next / years,

it will be spanish, biology, math.

I keep my cell very spartan and school-oriented

as a buffer against prison life.

Prison can get inside of you.

It's invasive, and I try to keep it out,

and school is one of the means

that I keep it out.

[Radio chatter]

hall: I majored in german studies.

The language was so hard.

However, now I love to read

about american news in german.

One of the things that really attracted me about germany

was its historical mistake and then the manner

in which it tried to really make up for that mistake.

♪

♪

This is my cell.

This is where I rest my head,

get my thoughts together, do my schoolwork.

You have my sink, my window.

You see I don't have much of a view of much out there,

but it's all right.

I definitely look forward to having

a different environment when I get out...

But, uh, for now, I got to make the most

of what I have, you know?

[Keys jangling]

♪

Kenner: the overwhelming majority of our students

will be sent back to the communities

typically from which they came

and will engage with their families

and those communities, and they will be better

at that when they're educated in a way

that's meaningful to them.

Professor; so the question is, what does that do

to the fact that we have

this foundational document which itself is premised

on a contradiction?

Yeah, giovannie?

Hernandez: nah. I was just thinking about this quote

from a "song of myself."

"I am vast, I contain multitudes,"

and I think that says it all,

where there's this acknowledgement

that the individual is not just this set personality,

this set, uh, being.

His relationship to everyone else

and everything else in the world

constitutes this oneness.

What I do today may affect what someone

is capable of doing tomorrow or vice versa.

Professor: you know, keep trying to bring this

back to what makes these documents

foundational to us as a nation

and what are manifestos.

So I didn't get everyone's manifestos.

Calling it manifesto. It's really a declaration.

I have yours.

What did you have to think about

when you wrote your declarations?

It was personal for me because

my sister sent me a letter,

and she wrote in a way that nowadays

the little teens out there,

they use text messaging, the funny words,

and it broke my heart.

After I came to college and I learned

the english language, you know,

I became a gram--grammar police,

so I wanted to arrest her.

[Laughter]

so I wrote the declaration of inflection for her.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident:

"that words are our greatest gifts,

"that they are endowed with stupendous powers,

"that among these are documentation,

"communication, and expression,

"that whenever any form of texting becomes

"destructive of our language,

"it is a right of said technology to revise it

"and enlighten its user.

"When lucidity is bedimmed by impatience,

"which in turn spawns ignorance,

"it is our right, it is our duty,

"to reinvent texting

"and to provide correct grounds

"for our majestic language.

"We mutually pledge to hold twitter

in contempt forever."

Professor: nice.

[Laughter]

yoon: for a typical -page paper,

I'll have about of these front and back,

and then my bucket would be full

of, uh, crumpled papers.

These--number one smiley face means this is

the first page that I can type up.

This is the biggest cell I've ever been in

in different maximum-security prisons.

The first thing I did when I came to this cell

was I put my hand like this,

and I was amazed that I couldn't touch

the wall with my feet.

I spend most of my time lying down, looking that way,

where I have my accomplishments,

my family.

I have a picture of an astronaut to remind me

of who I wanted to be when I was young.

I came in when I was .

I'm going home when I'm if all things go well.

As inmates, we could spend our time just trying

to count the years and the days

and the minutes, or we can do something

with that time, which is what we're trying to do.

♪

Man on p.a.: Attention, all inmates.

Line up on the white line by the rec room

for the count.

[Buzzer]

israil: there's a misconception that people

in prison just have this free time

that they just do whatever they want with

however they want to do it with.

Time is managed in relation to something

we call the count.

It happens times a day.

You go back to your housing location,

where you lock at, whether it is a cell

or a dormitory.

You are locked in, and you are gonna stand up,

and corrections officers, literally take a headcount.

You could be inside the school building.

There's a bell that rings or an alarm that goes off,

and it means "stop doing what you're doing and go back in."

Kenner: part of being institutionalized is that

your day is constantly interrupted.

The chaos of the prison is an extraordinary challenge

when it comes to the kind of focus that's necessary

to get through the routine of college

on a day-to-day basis.

[Slam]

[men shouting]

yoon: it's hard to study when all the inmates

come back from the programs.

After :, it's dead quiet.

That's when I can really focus.

I'm studying till : in the morning

because that's when it's most quiet.

My favorite time of the night.

♪

Israil: I was incarcerated for years.

I enrolled into bpi, I went on to get

my ba degree in .

Admissions is a competitive process.

We operate in prisons across new york state.

Of them are for men, of them is for women.

When admissions is fully open across all facilities,

we have up to people applying.

♪

♪

Woman: I go to the interview.

He was asking some crazy questions.

I didn't even know what he was talking about

half the time.

I had to ask him, like, "what did you just say?

"What does that word mean, like?

What are you talking about, like?"

Then comes find out I get the letter.

Slipped it under my door. Seen it.

I was like, "oh, I'm in there!"

I didn't think I was getting in, though.

Man: I kept making the interviews.

Each time, I thought that I did good,

but this last time was the one that I thought that--

I was like, "yeah. I screwed this one up,"

because I put my head down.

I just--i couldn't come up with words to say,

and finally at the end, I told 'em--i said,

"listen. I don't know, you know, what you people--

"what you want me to say.

"All I know is that I need to get in here, you know.

I need something to help change my life."

Maybe that's what worked for me.

Spivey-jones: the new guys that just got accepted

into bpi, I don't think they have any idea

what they're in for.

Next week when they start class,

they're in for a surprise.

Kenner: everybody's good? All right. Let's get started.

Welcome to bard college.

Congratulations.

We're gonna start coursework monday morning,

and I think we should just start being really clear

about the scale of the commitment,

first of all, that we are making to you

and, secondly, that we expect of you.

This is a full-time and long-term

and total commitment.

When that door closes, you're at bard college.

Faculty are going to be evaluating what you do

as a student exclusively.

That is to say the college has no interest

in the nature of your criminal conviction,

the length of your sentence,

how much time you have left in prison.

It's not our business.

We're in the business of education.

This is the thing we know how to do,

and we happen to do it here,

and when you leave this room tonight,

there is now something that can be taken away from you

that's completely different than when you walked in.

♪

Montgomery: I would like to think that I've been

through the worst.

I've been through the worst,

and I think my peers have been through the worst,

so it's like you come here,

and this is at your bottom.

This is my desk.

I have my cards, my bibles, cans, whatever.

I finished high school because I like to learn,

but wasn't, like, really, like,

something that was hammered.

School wasn't nothing.

It was just like go to school, kind of cool,

but if you find a man who got a job, you all good.

You set for life.

I was raised to be, like, dependent on someone else.

I was never really raised to be independent,

like get your own.

It was never, like, really a value that was instilled

inside of me or my sisters,

and that's probably why we turned out

the way we turned out.

♪

Professor: the question was

what's the most satisfying way

for a human being to live in the world

according to hannah arendt,

michael crawford, and aristotle, right?

Anyone can volunteer.

Montgomery: so I think that "air-en-et"?

Liebert: "ar-ent." Hannah arendt. Yeah.

I believe that arendt-- I think that arendt

believes that if humanity were

to stick with the activities then...

Liebert: which activities are those?

Activity, work, and labor.

Liebert: work, labor, and...

Not in the same order.

Labor, work, and action.

Labor, work, and action.

If humanity was to stick with them,

then life would be satisfying.

And why?

Anything and everything you believe

or was taught to believe,

none of that matters.

It's like all that's bullshit.

Now I want you to read with, like, a fresh slate

and just, like, what do you think this means?

What do you think the author was trying to say?

Who is the author?

Like, where did he come from?

Woman: this is like the boot camp

without the physical training,

and it's kind of hard because the professor

really isn't telling us

if it's--if we're right or if we're wrong.

She's leaving it up to us to figure it out,

so that's even more of a challenge

because now I'm questioning my own self.

♪

Woman: letters? Yeah. Comments I have...

Woman, voice-over: I teach first years on a regular basis.

What I get to see, what I know

when they walk in there and they are doing

their best to be brave-- ha ha--

in the face of probably some of the hardest material

they've ever encountered.

Mengert: all right. So today, we are going to start class

by talking about how to organize a paragraph.

I've now had the opportunity to see some of your writing

this semester, and what I am noticing

is some fantastic ideas but not a lot

of cohesion in your paragraphs,

so we're going to talk about what constitutes a paragraph.

So a paragraph should be first unified.

A paragraph should be coherent.

It should be well-developed.

Man: when is there too many sentences?

Or too less?or too less?

Mengert: or too few.

Gaertner: a lot of the stuff that I was reading

I couldn't understand what it was.

You know, it would take me , hours just to get

past pages because I would keep having to stop

and go over and look in the dictionary,

find out what this word is and go over the paragraph

over and over and over, trying to figure it out.

Mengert: what changes, let's say, around chapter ?

Gaertner: a lot more people.

A lot more people!

When he goes into the pharaoh,

that's when I started thinking about it.

I said--i don't know how to put it into words--

I know that when I seen the pharaoh,

I know something clicked in my head,

and that's what made me start thinking

about all the people that--

how many people there are.

Ok. The world that we're inhabiting

suddenly has expanded a great deal.

[Bell ringing]

ok.

[Indistinct chatter]

gaertner: my life is different now

because my whole program changed.

You know, I was used to working

in industry all day long.

We make all the highway signs and the stop signs.

We don't do the license plates.

Everybody always thinks prison make license plates.

You just sit there and do, like, robotic work.

You know, a meaningless job.

Israil: someone who is not in bpi may have a mess hall job.

Man on radio: to -. Mess hall workers are out.

If you don't have a mess hall job,

you could have a porter job,

which is basically you sweep floors all day.

Spivey-jones: when you have an absence

of any programs in prison that facilitate

any kind of growth, individuals are...

Becoming perhaps disillusioned

because they're not being prepared

for anything other than what they've already

been doing, which is crime.

Hall: when I didn't have access to bpi,

I was more liable to hang out in the yard or day room

and watch tv because there wasn't nothing

better to do,

and there's the ever present violence

and, you know, drugs.

Man: prison is a place where you could lose hope.

There's so much that you have to negotiate in prison

mentally that goes just

above your physical confinement.

I saw guys around me inside who were disconnected

from everyone else, individuals who didn't bathe,

who didn't clean their living space.

They walked to the mess hall, and they ate,

and they walked back to their cells.

They survived, but they really weren't living.

Man: people on the outside don't really understand

what's involved once you completely lose your liberty.

It is punishment enough just to be incarcerated.

My biggest challenge is preventing suicides,

not preventing homicides.

Tatro: some people, you know, they don't survive this.

You know, I have seen prison destroy people.

Maybe a month ago, they shut the prison down

for about a day and a half.

A kid named kyle-- he's a friend of mine--

he attempted to commit suicide.

It was kind of a horrific suicide attempt.

Every time I'd see him, he's, "dyjuan what

"are you working on?

Can you get me a book to read?"

You know, "I finished 'crime and punishment.'

Do you have another classic?"

And then he tries to commit suicide,

and it reminds you how lonely prison can be.

♪

Wow. That's-- that's powerful.

I'm telling you I can see your writing improved greatly

since the last time I looked at it.

Yeah. I'm getting to the point where now

I actually enjoy writing these papers.

Yeah, that's so true.

Max weber uses a german--

definitely with german, you have words

that have meanings beyond just the surface meaning.

So for example, enlightenment is a word

that we would think means to think

at a higher level

or to gain a state of consciousness,

but when you read that word enlightenment in german,

it has a whole bunch of connotations

of a historical period.

So try to read what's underlying his words.

Hall, voice-over: I've always loved school.

I wanted to come home and do my homework.

I think it was maybe second or third grade,

and a teacher asked us "how many of you

want go to college?"

My hand shot up,

but I was the only one really,

and that was the experience that kind of told me

maybe I shouldn't broadcast

that, you know, I like school.

I grew up in brownsville, brooklyn.

I come from a single-parent home.

I was born in , so I guess, you know,

you could say that I grew up in the eighties.

I would say that the world I grew up in

was pretty tense.

[Siren]

it was pretty violent to say the least.

I remember taking on the way of thinking

that "don't think, just act."

I remember telling myself that,

and when I first did it, I got a good peer response,

so I just kept on doing it.

I don't recall doing any extensive writing

in my high school.

I didn't know the grammar and the structure

in which I could express myself.

I made it to the tenth grade.

I had this manner of reading the first chapter,

the middle chapter, and the last chapter

of a book, and I was able to get by

doing that.

I didn't read a whole book until I came to jail.

Hernandez: I grew up in the south bronx

in a predominantly hispanic

and african-american community.

My middle school was, like, one

of the worst middle schools

in the entire city at that time.

On my first day, I saw someone chase another guy

with a switchblade in his hand.

I was jumped there a few times.

These guys keep beating me up.

You know, I became violent myself to defend myself.

That's when I really started cutting school,

you know, um, cutting class.

When everyone you, all your friends are g*ng members

and drug dealers, dropouts,

how else to fit into that?

I joined the gangs, I sold drugs.

I did things I probably shouldn't of did.

I didn't feel like I was a part of society.

I didn't feel like I was a citizen.

I had no idea what a citizen was supposed to do,

what sort of duties and responsibilities

they had to others.

I felt like I had a responsibility

to the people I knew, to my family,

although I let them down, and my friends.

Anyone outside of that I didn't know,

I didn't owe them anything.

You know, i--

nobody ever taught me any of that.

We didn't learn that.

[Radio squawks]

[indistinct chatter]

tatro: this is my third full semester.

Bard just gets progressively harder.

I had a professor tell us, you know, "I teach college,

"and I teach to the best students

"in the most elite universities in the country,

"and that's what I'm gonna do here.

Let's get started."

When someone tells you that, it's a whole new day.

Tatro: I was just thinking

you have this irish population

who's kind of against the role of government

in their lives, and yet they seem to be

the ones advocating for, like,

a greater government presence in some sense.

Like, how is that--

can you speak about that tension?

Professor: it's about power...ok.

And using power to actually

both protect themselves but also to secure

their position within the greater

urban, you know, complex.

Several of you have in the past referenced things

like w.e.b. Du bois'

double consciousness, right,

but there's no reason not to extend

that metaphor to the irish.

Ok. So they constantly have to negotiate

or renegotiate this tension?

The tension is obvious for us,

but, in fact, like du bois' double consciousness,

it's not that, you know, one day you're one thing

and the next day you're the next.

It's, in fact, actually that there are

two emotional, personal, communal struggles

happening within you.

There are things that, you know, I take for granted

when I'm teaching at mit that I can just do

that I can't do here.

The mixed media that you'll use inside a classroom

at an elite institution that I can't reproduce here.

Here, you go back to a more basic teaching structure

so what else I have, you know?

So u, a, u, a, so u, a,

and plus now u, a. Ok.

Wilder: our students in bpi show up to class

extraordinarily well-prepared,

and so a lot of that sort of gimmickry

that we need, we don't need here as much

because actually everyone's done the reading.

Man: essentially what you're doing is you're

combining all of the components

of your vector and your--

professor: yes, I'm gonna just put this aside.

This was connectivity.

So you're collecting the terms?

And this one together, you know,

and so that's what I'm looking for.

That's what I'm looking for.

[Speaking chinese]

[students speaking along]

[speaks chinese] vehicle.

[Speaks chinese] vehicle.

[Speaks chinese]

[students repeat]

[speaks chinese]

[speaks chinese]

[professor speaks chinese]

your car already stopped or--

[professor speaks chinese slowly]

ha! There you go. Thank you.

You're incarcerated, you're in jail,

and in the midst of that chaos,

in the midst of this routine, you find something.

It's like a oasis,

you know, a fertile place in the desert,

and this is what this does.

It's not the norm. This is not the norm.

Goes back again until it completes.

Professor: ok. L.p.

Kenner: for a generation, college opportunity was

a central part of criminal justice

in the united states.

It was the least expensive and best way to reduce

violence, reduce recidivism, and increase public safety,

and yet it became a lightning rod politically.

There had been college opportunity

in virtually every state

and federal prison in the united states.

It was eliminated overnight with the clinton crime bill.

The plan is not--is tough. It is fair.

It will put police on the street

and criminals in jail.

It lets law-abiding citizens know that we are working

to give them the safety they deserve.

Peter jennings: on capitol hill today, members

of the senate and the house have been meeting

to work out their differences over a new crime bill,

and one of the issues on the table has to do

with prisoners who take college level courses

while they're behind bars.

Under the new crime bill, the federal aid money

that helps them do it may be eliminated.

Annucci: people were angry about criminals.

They were angry about offenders.

They thought if you commit a crime you should

go to prison, you should be punished,

you should not receive the benefit

of higher education,

so as much as we tried very hard to convince

the powers that be, at least on the federal level,

that that was a short-sighted decision,

you couldn't fight against the -second soundbite.

We are sending a terrible message

to the american public when we were spending

at least $ million sending convicted felons

to institutions of higher learning.

Our constituents already pay to feed, house, clothe,

and rehabilitate prisoners.

♪

♪

Hall: I was in prison for a year when college

was taken away quickly.

You know, I was interested in enrolling,

but I wasn't able to,

so I kind of was, like, left out,

like, "what am I gonna do now?"

Annucci: we did not have any taxpayer-based money

to support college programming,

but a number of individuals decided that there were

other ways to provide that same programming

basically through private donations,

and it's taken off.

I'd love to have more.

♪

♪

Professor: for this class, you're drawing

from your personal...

Kenner: bpi has no endowment, no students pay tuition,

so every semester, every year

is a...existential event,

but in philanthropy, every professional wants to judge

our success or failure by one metric

and one measure alone,

and that's, you know, what they call recidivism,

which is the rate at which people who are released

from prison return.

We must end the cycle of recidivism.

Nearly half, nearly half of the minorities

who go to prison come out and go back

through the revolving door once again.

Of those people who went

through the bard college program,

the recidivism rate has only been %,

% compared to close to %.

[Applause]

we're going to take this program,

and we're going to expand it to prisons

all across the state of new york.

[Applause]

♪

The government will spend $, a year

on a prison cell to keep a person in prison,

more money than it takes to send a person

to harvard university for a year.

Newscaster: governor cuomo has proposed using

taxpayer dollars to fully fund a college degree for convicts.

He says it would be good for the state in the long run.

So my -year-old now-- I just told him yesterday,

"you're on a new career track."

[Laughter]

"when you're , you're gonna rob that bank

in poughkeepsie"...

[Laughter]

"because you got years coming to you courtesy

"of governor cuomo,

and you're gonna come out looking great."

♪

Lopez: a lot of people feel that they work damn hard

to support their families and that if anyone

should get an education it should be their children,

not someone who has menaced society,

has commit crimes against citizens,

but they named this thing

the department of corrections.

How could you correct someone if you're taking

the very tools that actually correct and rehabilitate

the individuals

that you want to be protected from?

Man: "that glib and oily art, to speak and purpose not,

"since what I well intend

"I'll do 't before I speak--

"that you make known it is no vicious blot,

m*rder, or foulness."

So I guess basically, you know, she's saying

she's going to speak her mind, you know, to lear.

She's going to be defiant, and, uh...

She's not gonna listen to him.

Mengert: "glib and oily art."

Why oily? Why is this art oily?

Man: the sisters are basically kissing behind

to get their part of the kingdom,

and she's not having none of that.

It's greasy, it's like a pork chop.

It's greasy.

It's a term that we use in the yard

when somebody's acting, you know, shady

you know what I'm saying?

"He's a greasy character."

Mengert: as we've just read "plato's republic,"

can you put that in conversation

with "the republic"?

Gonzalez: they're so greedy for gain

that they're not even thinking

about the country as a whole

or really honoring their father.

Their sight is on half the kingdom,

third of the kingdom,

and, uh, she chooses to not go that route.

She reasons it out and says,

"I'm not gonna play this game

"that they're playing.

"This is more important to me to be honest

and virtuous and stand with integrity."

Brown: lear represents the philosopher king.

Then she's supposed to adhere

to whatever he has to say

because he's the ruler of the kingdom,

so he knows what's best for the kingdom,

and if we talking about plato, "the republic,"

the happiness of the kingdom

is the ultimate goal of the king,

so I guess she's wrong by denying him.

All right, but what happens--

what happens when the king is wrong?

He's still supposed to be obeyed?

Because he's obviously wrong.

Mengert: ha ha ha!he's definitely wrong.

His kingdom, he gives it away,

and they cast him aside eventually.

Gonzalez: it's been rewarding already.

It's months I've only been in here.

You're putting words to systems

that you've recognized your whole life

but you never had a word for it.

Right? Hegemony or alienation.

It's rewarding, but it's harder.

It's difficult.

We're getting piled on here.

♪

Professor: ok. So of course,

the big deal today is getting

your first papers back.

A couple of general points.

Quotation of the authors is overused.

You want to be using quotations very sparingly.

I want to hear what you say and how you understand

the historians, ok?

Does that make sense?

I'm gonna move over to that table,

and I'll call you over one at a time.

Woman: that's not bad.

So I'm gonna read to you my final comments,

and then we'll go through it a little bit.

I don't really feel like I really--

I don't know, grasp--

I didn't really understand, like.

You're gonna get a second crack at this, ok?

No thesis, and that's probably

the critical element that's missing

because if you had developed a thesis in the introduction,

then the rest of the paper would have been better.

Calgon, take me away!

Right, right.

Woman: I was up studying,

reading the material, trying to make notes,

and everything, and I got a c on my paper.

Woman: I think we were all kind of taught

to, like, really admire the constitution

and the framers and stuff,

and now, we're kind of learning

how that affected just common people back in the day.

We never--i never really thought about that.

I just thought it was this great thing

and america became democratic,

but from the perspective

that we're learning this now,

you realize that's not really the case,

graham: we're not really looking

at history the way it's normally taught in school.

We're actually dissecting it ourselves.

We're trying to find out

where the source is coming from

and how authentic the--the document is,

and we're breaking it down on our own,

we're making our own inferences.

I've gotten lowest grade I've ever gotten

in my life on a paper.

It's none of your business.

[Laughter]

woman: mrrow!

She's not disclosing this information.

I got to finish an -page ethnicog--

ethni--i can't even say that word.

Interviewer: ethnographic?

I have a problem. Yeah, ethnographic report.

I got to finish mengert's paper,

and me and her... Are battling

with my with my thesis...

And english, grammar, I hate grammar.

It's all about rules and learning rules,

and eww!

Being locked up at and then not even knowing

my times table when I first got locked up

because I was young, then having get my ged,

then having to go into bard,

it's been just a reoccurring theme

of building myself up,

you know, getting smarter, getting smarter.

I didn't drink coffee before this.

I just started drinking coffee.

Now I'm staying up all night,

and I'm not going outside,

I'm not gonna go work out.

I'm more into trying to understand

what this text means and making sure

that I get it down.

That's for the most part what I'm doing now

[exhales]

annucci: I'd much rather have someone worrying, studying

"am I gonna pass my examination?"

Versus someone studying

"how am I gonna pass contraband

"beyond the security checkpoint?

"How am I gonna pass heroin

past the security checkpoint?"

Security, unfortunately, has to permeate

every aspect of correctional operations.

These are convicted felons,

and the officers have to do their jobs,

they have to be respected,

and they have to be safe,

but by the same token, the inmates

have to be treated humanely.

Man on radio: he's been located.

He's on his way back.

Woman on radio: - copies.

Hall: I have had officers who are very supportive

and encouraging,

and I have had officers that some way or another

point out "don't think because you're getting

an education that you got something over me."

Annucci: most correction officers do not have

college education, so part of the dynamic here

is a potential resentment for somebody

that has to obey your orders but that--

but may now feel that they're smarter than you.

Israil: there are rules. It's prison,

and rules have consequences when they're broken.

[Radio chatter]

♪

Gaertner: one of the fears I have is, is getting locked up

while I'm in this program because I don't want to,

you know, work hard for , months, you know,

doing all these assignments and everything

and then all of a sudden get locked up.

♪

Spivey-jones: shu is like a jail inside of a jail.

You spend hours a day in a cell.

You eat in the cell.

You have access to maybe books,

or photos.

Man: shu tears you up, man,

tears you up, breaks you down

mentally cause you're locked up in a cell

for hours a day with no contact.

You can't talk to anyone,

and that takes a toll on you, man.

♪

Different man: I started bpi in the fall of .

In , I failed a drug test.

That sent got me sent upstate

out of this facility and out of the program.

I'd hoped eventually to make my way back here.

♪

[Radio chatter]

professor: if you're drawing with light...

Kim, voice-over: a lot of us are flawed in some way,

especially when it comes to drugs,

and a lot of us have addictions,

and those aren't things that just go away.

They're kind of with you always.

After the fact, you kick yourself.

"Oh how could I have done that?

It was so stupid. It was so pointless."

You start to reevaluate what's important to you,

and, um, I'm just glad I'm back.

[Bell ringing]

liebert: so here we're reading

aeschylus's "oresteia,"

tragedies dealing with the legendary curse

on the house of atreus, which is actually

a mythological kind of complex

that relates very much to homer's "iliad."

All of these students have taken, with one exception,

my homer class last year, and so they're sort of like

specialists already in classics.

What I want to do is to get them to relate to texts

that seem at first to be really foreign and strange

and to realize actually that they're quite relatable.

Read it one more time.

"But it is the law that drops of blood spilt

"on the ground demand further bloodshed;

"for m*rder calls on the erinyes,

"who from those who perished before

brings one ruin to another's wake."

Liebert: "brings one ruin in another's wake."

Yeah, so that's crucial. Right.

It "brings one ruin in another's wake."

It's almost like the chorus themselves

are saying, you know, "in murdering

"as retaliation for m*rder,

you are bound to bring ruin on to yourself,"

and yet they're insisting that that's

the only form of justice.

Tatro: this idea of-- it's idealistic, the justice...

Liebert: yeah, of "the agamemnon"--

of the type of revenge that takes place in "the agamemnon,"

whereas in the "choephori,"

they come straight out and say it.

It's very blunt.

It's this is a life for a life.

Yeah, no. You're right. You're right.

Did others sense that, that the conception

of justice is a little different between the two?

Man: I think we have in "the agamemnon"

where we're looking at justice being,

I guess, nurtured from the time

that iphigenia is m*rder*d up until the time

that agamemnon lands back at his house,

so we have this narrative that keeps getting sung

though the whole play where we have this concept

of justice is nearing.

♪

Yoon: because we're in prison, we're not animals.

These green colors, they don't define who we are.

You know, what defines us is our--is our minds

and our hearts,

that we have moralities even in prison.

Spivey-jones: what college does,

it helps us it helps us learn about the nation,

it helps us become civic beings.

It helps us understand that we have an interest

in our community, that our community

is a part of us and we are a part of it,

and oftentimes, we don't feel that way

in a prison environment.

We feel as if we're cut off from the community.

The community is against us.

Hall: we get caught up in this notion of ourselves

as a prisoner, as this contained identity

that sees the world as if it's against us

and when really we are-- we have done things

to make the world go against us,

and we need to recognize that.

By opening my mind in the classroom,

I was able to get a better sense of that.

[Professor speaking spanish]

♪

It took me years and a half to make it

to the point where I will be considered for parole.

Even though I have devoted much prayer and awareness

to why I have been in jail,

the parole process brought it to a real strong head for me.

I'm gonna tell you I never wanted anything

as bad in my life, though, you know.

I wanted the parole board to understand that

when I was younger I made

a lot of irrational decisions.

My whole way of thinking was "ok. People gonna fight you

and rob you unless you fight back."

I became very reckless, and it just so happened

on one night a guy came to the area

in which I lived and drew a weapon,

and I was totally not even in the line of fire

or around it, but when I saw

that he did that, i, um, ran towards

where my friends were and got a g*n

that I knew my friend had and engaged

into this gunfight with him,

and the result was a lady that I had grew up with,

a lady I looked up to, uh, lost her life.

I really don't think there's any justification

for getting a g*n and partaking

in what I partook in.

I didn't know the guy.

It was just that whole idea

that this has happened before,

and the only way it's gonna stop

if you take a stand to it,

which was a way of looking at things wrong

that caused so much destruction.

♪

♪

A person lost their life though, you know,

a person who I considered a friend.

I don't know if I could forgive myself for that.

Sometimes, I do ask "do I deserve to leave?"

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪