Ohio Prison Education Exchange Project (OPEEP)
Since 2019, OPEEP has provided higher educational opportunities to adult prison facilities in central Ohio and brought Ohio State’s campus students to learn side-by-side with incarcerated students. Tiyi Morris, PhD, associate professor in the Department of African American and African Studies, directs OPEEP along with Mary Thomas, PhD, professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS). OPEEP courses are open to all Ohio State students and available at the Columbus, Newark, Lima and Mansfield campuses.
The more than 40 Ohio State faculty who participate in OPEEP teach at facilities in Lima, Mansfield, Lancaster, London and Marysville — ORW is the first and only location where students can earn credits toward an Ohio State degree. The classes are held in the basement where the white-painted walls are adorned with Ohio State banners and Brutus cut-outs. Autumn semester course offerings were Feminist Perspectives on Addiction with Professor Linda Mizejewski, PhD; Social Inequality with Senior Lecturer Rachel Schneider, PhD; and Extreme Weather and Climate with Associate Professor Alvaro Montenegro, PhD.
Student Voices
The students, reading handwritten notes because they do not have access to computers, spoke of the importance of the opportunity to study and earn a college degree. (Hopefully this semester, the prison will allow the students access to Chromebook computers for the first time, removing one more barrier from their participation as Ohio State students.)
One student detailed her gratification in recognizing the reasons for the weather variations when she walked outside; several laughed in recollecting Montenegro’s use of his arms and whatever objects were at hand to demonstrate weather phenomena.
Roxie played the guitar and sang a song she and fellow student Jamie had written about the ozone layer to the tune of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” With some prodding, Jamie reprised an accompanying interpretive dance, which included squinting in agony at an imaginary sun no longer shielded by the ozone layer. Roxie thanked Warden Erin Maldonado of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction for allowing her and others access to a music program.
Heather, who is incarcerated for life, teared up as she described how the opportunity to learn helped give meaning and purpose to her days.
One student in the audience said she has autism and, in taking the courses, has finally learned how to study to accommodate her needs. Another responded by describing how tutoring her friend helped her better understand the material too.
Several thanked Mizejewski and Schneider for their acceptance and support. It was important and rare to be treated as individuals — not prisoners — they said.
Liberation at the Margins (LAM) Collective
Still other students described their experience as members of the Liberation at the Margins (LAM) Collective, a group composed of Ohio State faculty, staff and students and incarcerated participants at the ORW. LAM Collective students collaborate to design and implement innovative workshops on prison-based and justice-oriented teaching and learning, conduct research, and serve as an advisory council for the embedded degree program at ORW. The LAM Collective is funded by a $480,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation.
Thomas said the LAM Collective is a crucial aspect of OPEEP’s work. “Its values and activities continually anchor our mission and inform our programmatic and curricular development. We also produce original scholarship in community with members who are most impacted by higher educational disenfranchisement.”
Morris describes it as a “humanistic research approach to pedagogy” that foregrounds incarcerated people’s desire for and experiences with collective learning and authorship. “LAM Collective scholarship will contribute to academic communities grappling with ethical and practical matters of collaborative higher education in prison projects, the values and challenges of implementing justice-oriented pedagogies, and the impact of prison education on teaching and learning,” she said.