Erin's blog

“Wow, Time Square looks different from what I’ve seen on TV!” I overheard some familiar Chinese talking among crowds of tourists in Time Square as I was running to Penn station to catch a train. Finally, I found my seat. I wondered why that sentence was still stuck in my head. Right, I said exactly same thing three years ago when I finally arrived at that symbolic site.

In just four years, I am doing everything I could never think of before by myself, travelling, dealing with complicated visa issues, negotiating with different people and so on. All the excitement of discovering new things on this continent seems to decline over time because I just have tons of other things to deal with and worried about. I become indifferent for many things which sound so exciting and tempting before. During the time I spend here, I acquire all kinds of new skills not because I am smart but because I have to learn to survive.

So much has changed and so much is about to. I made the decision to come here purely to have opportunities to receive the best high education in the world. At least, that’s my initial attention at that time. The moment I stepped in this continent, the journey full of mixtures of conflicts between of two cultures and assimilations of the two has begun. Some of the conflicts were expected before while some just went beyond my imaginations. Going back and forth between here and home, I am constantly trying to find a spot where I belong.

I was surprised when my peers got confused about my pictures of prison and school. Immediately, I realized that the longer I looked at these two postings, the more they looked alike. I was absolutely shocked by such an observation because school and prison really should not be equal in any senses.

Honestly, I have my assumptions and impressions about prison. I believe that prison exists for a reason. No matter how problematic the prison system is becoming, prison primarily serves to be the correction facility for people who made mistakes under justice system. People are sent to prison for something that they did wrong in most cases today.

On the other hand, in most people’s mind including mine, school ought to be a divine place. Ironically, the administrations and certain policies are compromising the purity of this place. However, no one can deny the paramount role that school and education play in any individual’s growth and success. 

How did such two distinctive places get mixed? I will start my conversation from the two pictures: my high school gate which really looks like locked-down place from outside and women prisoners sitting together who look like typical Chinese students are studying. These two pictures together showed two places strangely but interestingly intertwine.

Last week, we had an activity, figuring out several polices that explore the problem of female offending problem and address the problem.

It was hard to decide which role at first place because honestly I am not familiar with the system and don’t know anyone in that system. After we finally decided that we will be policy maker, all the policy seems really unrealistic. However, even though the problem seem difficult to deal with. We still need to figure out something to deal with it because we not suppose just wait and do nothing before things get worse. Therefore, we figure we should have a big goal, such as eliminating the poverty.

Ironically, even though this is the goal of generation of human. No one has accomplished nor does anyone have figure out a way to reach that destination. Neither communism nor capitalism had this figured out. However, the direct correlation between the crime rate and poverty is undeniable.  The reality in this society is already very cruel for common people. At the same time, for people with come criminal record, life is even hard. It might sound mean, but the truth is that their lives barely go back to normal again. Also, no matter how feminist claim the progress they made to change the unequal situation for women in society. Women are still in disadvantages place. Therefore, these offending women really got them in an unfortunate place to live. Alliance or Vision both tried, but didn’t succeed in some sense.

There are several problems that attract my attention in this problem.

Firstly, I have to say that a lot of things happened this week and this reading is really out of anticipation in many ways.  Our reflections and readings make me think of a lot of questions which I don’t have answers right now.

To check the validity of the accusations Sommer claimed on Rigoberta Menchu, who is the writer of the book that moved me deeply last week, I Googled Rigoberta. Surprisingly, her Nobel Peace Prize was nearly revoked by Nobel Committee due to the David Horowitz’s campaign attacked her using David’s Stoll book. David Stoll carried out an investigation of Menchu’s story and found many evidences that proved that she changed many elements of her life in order to meet publicity needs for some political purpose.

I guess this explains some of confusions I had reading  the book, disconnected timelines, contradicting stories and mixed orientations of narratives and my feelings was cheated partially to fulfill some political causes. I am pretty sure this is not the first case of falsification in the literature history. In the end, the controversies about her testimony and potential of losing the prize were settled because Menchu’s contributions of bringing attention to the genocide happened at Guantemala and to advocate peace. Still, such a drama was not expected when I read such emotional piece.

“I’m still keeping secrets what I think no-one should know. Not even anthropologist or intellectuals, no matter how many books they have, can find our secrets”

After three weeks of preparation, we finally got to know about the people inside the prison. Our 360 courses are titled as Women in Walls. During previous weeks, we have been talking about what are the perceptions about the offenders and place in general.

Saturday trip was an eye-opened experience and even a little bit shocking for me. To be really inside ESP was another unforgettable trip. I was constantly thinking about the relationship of people and environment and the reciprocal effects on each other.  The later part about the transgender experience in prison was really uncomfortable and made me think more about the purpose of our courses especially the vision part.

When we enter a closed institution, what are my expectations from this experience? The answer has changed over these several weeks. Knowing more about sad stories behind his cold justice system, my appearance in the coming 5 weeks will make a difference in my life and hopefully theirs.

However, we I was standing in that luxurious prison cell in ESP and imaged that I will spend whole day here. I realize that imprisonment experience itself is a torture and not to mention that the current jail system was even more crowded.

All about money

I have been looking forward to our first field trip for a very long time. After the trip, I have to admit that I very shocked by what I saw during the process. My initial intention to take the 360 courses is to really enjoy the charm of liberal arts courses. Three weeks’ discussions bring more than deeper thoughts about walled community but also some in-depth insight about the hidden side about American society. I have been spending my time re-evaluate my decision about future.

The first time we introduced the term economics in our discussion was the Tuesday we start to talked about prison system in USA. The existence of the term privatized industrialized prison system was a shock for me. When and how did the justice system relate to business? Isn’t the purpose of prison to correct the wrong behaviors and keep people outside safe? My understanding of prison might not be accurate; at least the prison should not have anything to do with money. Well, I guess that my naïve perception of justice ended many years ago.

I have to admit that the permanent nature of our posts do seem more scary now especially when I look at my own writings after two weeks. Three weeks of in-depth discussion of silence with different kind of silence practice make my first analysis of silence so unconvincing and simple. I guess that’s why people always say writing is an endless process. I will not try to overthrow my reactions about silence but try to organize my thoughts in a more logic and connected way.

At this point, I am still not sure about whether I get the essence of silence. Last time, I try to visualize my perception of silence from two extremes. However, silence is too hard to be categorized by any standard. It can become so complicated or so simple depending on the situations. 

To visualize the silence, I chose the picture of deep sea. I do have a reason to put my picture in front of my words. For readers, I believe a picture will give them more direct answer which represents my perception of silence. However, for me, I think my rambling words actually can reveal my understanding of silence better. The way of expressing silence has to change for different purposes, doesn’t it?

I will stick my visualization image of silence, the deep sea. The serene but mysterious deep sea still can always remind me of my visual construction of silence in mind. The state of relief and being able to be completely isolated from the outside to focused on internal self.

Colored Amazons keeps its narratives of blacks in the judicial system. This chapter emphasizes more on the unequal treatment from media.  It looks like the dark side of media, especially those mainstream media hasn’t changed at all. The misleading interpretation and partial coverage of events are means of delivering inaccurate message to the public. Even nowadays, people have so many different ways to access to the latest news. Sometimes, too much information, both useful and meaningless ones everywhere is overwhelming. Even though this kind of explosion of information can be annoying, people at least have the opportunities to see other side of the news. Maybe the other side of the story is still not the whole truth; the expanding modern medias are trying to illuminate the blind spots of traditional coverage of news.  Growing up in a country with different political system, I have the developed the constant doubt about  the news in my country which is usually monitored by government for "better" of as whole. I used to think media here should be the accurate and neutral due the fame of being the country of freedom. I guess I was just too naïve and forget that the capitalist countries are influenced by party with capital rather than one single government.

During last class discussion, many of my peers mentioned the similarities and correlations between school and prison. I was surprised and had to admit that there are indeed many overlapping philosophies of two seemly irrelevant facilities, a confined space with many people, some levels of administrative stuff, spend some time to achieve certain purpose and etc.

However, after reading the two articles about higher education in prison, I realize the topic of higher education in prison has evolved to such a complicated one after 200 hundred years.  The fundamental paradox arises from the “tension between competing vision of what prisoners themselves are and accordingly, what prisoners should or ought to be?” ( Jones, d’Errico, 1)

Religion plays an important role in starting the education program in prison. (Interestingly, religious authority also initiated the original reform of educational system by starting charity school). However, prisons are after all institutions built for corrections purpose. This ongoing conflict between administrators and educators become the forces shape development t of higher education in prison.  Pennsylvania is one of the earliest state to start the program led by Quakers.