Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

For Inmates and Undergrads, Poetry Fosters Understanding

Most school projects begin and end in the classroom, but for a group of 18 Georgetown students, their work is designed to connect with people half a continent away.

This weekend, professors Jiva Manske and Wendy Jason, who teach “Social Justice/Conflict Studies,” launched a semester-long writing exchange program between students and members of the JustWrite program at New Mexico’s Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center. Each week, students in D.C. and Albuquerque will be given the same writing prompt, and the class members will be able to share their written responses through an online forum or by having their work read aloud in class.

Manske said that the program will have an important impact on a class whose main focus is understanding and analyzing social conflict.

“One of the key elements of conflict transformation is being able to humanize people, and this is a great way to humanize a group of individuals who are often demonized by society or, at best, ignored,” he said.

Manske and Jason worked for a year as facilitators of creative writing programs at the detention center prior to coming to Georgetown.

They hope the collaboration will allow participants to explore the similarities and differences in people’s backgrounds, and they expect students to be surprised by the commonality of human experience.

Carlos Contreras, the facilitator of the JustWrite program at the detention center, stressed the program’s positive impact on both students and inmates.

“JustWrite is an honest, real and unique dialogue attempting to create itself for the betterment of numerous lives, given that poetry shows us all as simply human,” he wrote in an email. “The JustWrite program will consist of honest-hearted human beings, being themselves on the page and sharing it with anyone that will read or listen.”

Annie Dale (COL ’14), a participant who has worked with a prison outreach program in the past, is excited to see the responses from both classes.

“Prisoners are people with a social stigma, and you don’t know who they are — you don’t know their story. The program really humanizes them and lets you see them as individuals,” she said.

Contreras expects both students and prisoners to draw important lessons from the experience.

“Inmates current and past that I’ve worked with on poetry have always had a positive experience,” he said. “Growth comes from the honesty allowed via this art form.”

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