30 Dartmouth Students Dressed in Green
Early in April, 30 Dartmouth students were strip-searched, finger-printed, photographed, and locked in cells for a weekend at the Criminal Justice Training Center at Haddam, Conn. None of the group was a felon. The students were participating in an advanced sociology seminar taught by Assistant Professor Joan Smith and a freshman seminar, taught by Lynn Mather of the Government Department, dealing with criminal law in urban areas.
Although both courses tend to follow a traditional academic approach, they also are based on a philosophy which integrates this approach with experiences in "natural" settings. Working in cooperation with the Dartmouth Outward Bound program, the classes have covered the spectrum of institutional problems in contemporary society. The students have spent a weekend at the Haddam prison and a weekend at the Waterbury State Mental Hospital in Vermont, observed sessions of the circuit court at White River Junction, and shared a class with some maximum security prisoners from the Windsor State Prison.
One of the students who did time at Haddam, Jean Weinberg '74, said she had been overcome by a feeling of "powerlessness" but left with a better understanding of "the world of experience." A freshman, Terrie Alafat, thought that the prison experience "made reading books and writing papers worthwhile. My books no longer are just words. I know what they are talking about because I have experienced it. The readings and lectures of my criminal law class have come together in an interpretation that is all my own. I think that is what learning is all about, really, somehow finding that balance. At this point you can truly agree or disagree because it comes from within. It's not just memorization, it is a part of you. I just want to test things, to try out my wings."
With alumni readers in mind Bill Geiger '74, another weekend prisoner, remembered it this way:
"Everybody who walked out of their cells that Sunday afternoon in April shared a unique and fascinating experience, though it was, times, painful and provoked anger and frustration. Inside, thoughts and feelings welled up and spilled into our post-incarceration meeting room, filling us - sunshine, hot coffee, and close, warm bodies. Thirty Dartmouth students dressed in green.
"No, you may never have experienced the same moment. There was no commons room, no hearty laughter and beer, and our baggy khaki seemed a distant second to a Dartmouth letter sweater. But don't let yourself doubt for a moment the common experiences we - you, the reader, and the student participants - share. Fellowship, in our time.
"If you are disheartened by coeducation, our story offers little comfort; there were women in prison. If year-round operation appears to you to be destructive to the brotherhood, little can ease your mind; some missed this particular experience because they were off campus. Your once-valued college symbol; you perhaps would find the experience demoralizing in its absence. But we all left our cells knowing that few would understand our experiences and feelings when we returned to the interest and questioning of our non-convict friends. Our unique experience may now appear to be but a new form of an old tradition, one we share, you and I. And we, too, will in our lives act on these experiences...'lest the old traditions fail'."
