Good News from the Cornell Prison Education Program

Last March, with a single college-writing workshop, the Cornell University Prison Education Program began operations at the Elmira Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison where nearly 1,800 men are incarcerated.

Last month it become a full-fledged degree-granting program, thanks to a partnership with Corning Community College, a SUNY school. Forty-two men are enrolled. Elmira students who successfully complete the 62-credit curriculum taught by Cornell professors and graduate students will earn an associate's degree from Corning. Courses this semester include a Survey in Political Thought, Constitutional Law and the Executive Branch, American History I, Composition I, and an Introduction to Biological Anthropology.

“I never thought I would have an opportunity to attend college,” says Guy Vellake, who is incarcerated at Elmira and enrolled in CPEP there. "What is exciting is that I may be able to be part of the solution to someone else's problems or needs instead of merely being a burden on society."

“The students have been anxious for this,” said Keisha Slaughter, Cornell’s coordinator for the Elmira CPEP program. “They know we’ve been working on bringing a credential to Elmira."

This June, the United States Supreme Court overturned the 2010 murder conviction of a man on death row whose numerous separate trials for the same crime were marked by clear racial discrimination during jury selection. Representing the inmate before the court was CPEP Board Member and Assistant Director of the Cornell Death Penalty Project, James and Mark Flanagan Professor of Law Sheri Lynn Johnson.

Cornell’s Allan R. Tessler Dean Eduardo M. Peñalver praised the “powerful persuasiveness” of Professor Johnson’s advocacy. Read about the case at the New York Times or the Cornell Chronicle.

Sara Jenab '19 (pictured during graduation weekend) was selected for an Internship with CPEP during the 2019-20 school year. "A year ago, I applied to be a TA with CPEP—I had no idea what I was signing up for," Sara writes. "A few months later I went to Guatemala to help create a college-in-prison program, and I have now committed to a year as the CPEP intern. I couldn’t be prouder or more excited to be part of this team!"

Legendary Cornell English Professor
Helps Revive Writer’s Bloc Journal

“We live for each other: we are indissolubly connected,” writes Prof. Ken McClane in his editor’s note for Volume 13 of Writer’s Bloc, published this summer, ending the publication’s two-year hiatus. Featuring poetry, drawings, stories, and essays by over a dozen men incarcerated in Auburn Prison, the journal includes what McClane calls “moments of reality—and harsh ones at that,” but also “lovely eruptions of the fanciful. It is a true literary gumbo.” Read the issue.

This month, in his powerful New York Daily News op-ed calling for Congress to restore Pell Grants to incarcerated people, CPEP alumnus and current Cornell University senior Darnell Epps tells his family's story. He and his brother were sentenced to life in prison, but through Cornell were able to take college courses that allowed them to engage with literature and knowledge on a new level, which transformed them. "When we recognize the capacity of others to learn," he writes, "we recognize their right to hope — and, by extension, their right to life."

In this newsletter

CPEP Offers Classes, Degree in Elmira Correctional Facility

Supreme Court Victory in Death Penalty Appeal

CPEP Executive Director Rob Scott Urges New York to Restore Funding for College in Prison

Bringing Labor Rights Expertise Inside

"College in prison changed our mentality"