August was a historic month for Ohio State and OPEEP. The new semester was our first as a degree-granting program at the Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW) in Marysville. Twenty new Buckeyes majoring in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies are taking 7 credits in Autumn Semester, including the first ever natural science class offered by OPEEP, Geography 1900 - Extreme Weather and Climate. Taught by Professor Alvaro Montenegro from the Columbus campus, the class enrolls all of the degree students and has a lab component. While campus students may take for granted the number of materials and amount of detailed planning that goes into every lab activity, at ORW every single item must be catalogued for a gate pass, loaded from Derby Hall and hauled to Marysville, checked at the front entrance of the prison facility against that list, carted to the classroom at the facility and hauled down a set of stairs, and then taken back out at the end of class, rechecked against the gate pass, and then loaded back into Dr. Montenegro’s car for the trip back to Columbus. He then has to unload it all at Derby Hall so that the supplies are ready to be used for other sections of the course offered on campus.
Faculty like Dr. Montenegro are extraordinary in their dedication to the students and to OPEEP. Another faculty member teaching at ORW this semester, Dr. Linda Mizejewski, a Columbus campus professor in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, has used funds from her Ronald and Deborah Ratner Distinguished Teaching Award to purchase a high-quality projector and utility cart for the classroom. Her course, Feminist Perspectives on Addiction, is the first class in the major curriculum to be offered to students in the degree cohort. We appreciate her generosity, so that our classroom can steadily be better equipped and more effective for teaching and learning. Thank you, Dr. M!
While half of the degree cohort is enrolled in Dr. Mizejewski’s course, the other half are taking Sociology 2463: Social Inequality, with Dr. Rachel Schneider from the Newark campus. Two of her degree students’ reflections from the first week of class are included in this month’s newsletter. The class enrolls 7 campus students and 10 degree students, and the essays consider the first encounter of the students in the prison classroom. Their poignant and artful reflections show how powerful it feels to an incarcerated person to have campus students travel to a prison classroom for collective learning.
Enrollment for Spring Semester will begin next month, and we hope you will help us to reach more campus students so that we can have success in offering all our classes across three prison locations in London, Lancaster, and Marysville. Without campus student enrollment, we cannot continue to offer our courses at the prison facilities for men, which enroll incarcerated students as well as non-degree seeking students. Please see our website’s Enroll tab, follow us on Instagram @opeep_osu, and keep an eye on the OPEEP list serv for details and fliers to share. Let’s increase our impact and reach by filling our classes and reaching as many students as we can. Finally, to support OPEEP’s mission, please consider donating to our Campus Campaign. We still have a lot of supplies and books to purchase this academic year, and your donation will help us build curriculum, programming, and student support. Thank you!
Dr. Mary Thomas and Dr. Tiyi Morris
