Students begin civic engagement projects for American Studies course
In recent years, many professors have begun incorporating civic engagement projects into their curricula in order to encourage and empower students to apply their learned knowledge into real-world contexts. In Professor of English, American Studies, and Native American Studies Caroline Woidat’s AMST 201 class, which examines mass incarceration in America, students are doing just that. As the semester comes to an end, these students are working to engage the Geneseo community and beyond to inform others about the epidemic of mass incarceration that is plaguing our country.
Throughout the semester, the students in this course have extensively studied the history and evolution of mass incarceration in America. Not only does this course incorporate information about the prison system as we know it today—as intrinsically linked to the War on Drugs and other racist policies—but it also discusses incarceration in other contexts, such as Japanese-American internment during World War II and the unprecedented rounding-up of immigrants into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers.
Today, the United States incarcerates more people than any other nation. The numbers are staggering: according to The Sentencing Project, an organization dedicated to the reintegration of previously incarcerated individuals, “the U.S. prison population has grown nearly 500% in the past 50 years.” Over two million individuals are behind bars across the nation today, and many are being exploited to work in the prisons for disgustingly low pay.
For Woidat’s course, students are working in small groups and creating projects that will combat the system of mass incarceration. While these projects are still in the works, two students from the course were able to detail their own project in an interview conducted via email. Senior political science major Lauren Daniels and sophomore history major Ethan Shaw are working together to conduct a letter-writing campaign in order to encourage the passing of two bills in New York State regarding prison labor laws: The Prison Minimum Wage Act and The Incarcerated Individuals Fair Labor Practices and Dignity for All Act.
“These pieces of legislation are integral in improving the working conditions for incarcerated workers,” said Shaw. “The Prison Minimum Wage Act would mandate a $3 per hour minimum wage for inmates, and the Incarcerated Individuals Fair Labor Practices and Dignity for All Act would establish a NYS prison labor board to ensure fair and equitable treatment for incarcerated workers.”
While the students could have pursued any type of activity for their civic engagement project, they felt it was important to contact representatives and show their support of these two bills as the SUNY system reaps the benefits of keeping people incarcerated and exploiting them for cheap labor.
“[We found that] the SUNY system has a contract with CorCraft, which is the New York State Department of Corrections, that requires SUNYs to give preferential treatment to CorCraft products. These products range from cleaning supplies to desks and chairs. There is no minimum wage for incarcerated workers, which allows CorCraft to keep prices low,” Daniels said.
Daniels and Shaw are hard at work by themselves, but the goal of their project is to get as many people involved as possible. They hope that other students and Geneseo community members will help them on their mission.
“Our project relies heavily on the inclusion of our community, and as a result there are no hard deadlines for when to begin and when to end. We want to raise awareness to the wrongdoings that have occurred, and continue to occur around us, and we urge members of our community to begin reaching out to their representatives as soon as possible,” said Shaw.
Daniels echoed Shaw’s sentiment as she discussed the intended outcomes of the letter-writing: “Obviously we would love to see these pieces of legislation make it out of committee and be turned into law by Governor Hochul’s signature. At a minimum we would like to raise awareness about the issue around campus and hopefully let our representatives in Albany know that as SUNY students we care about the issue of prison labor.”
All Geneseo students, faculty, and community members are encouraged to participate in this campaign. Anyone who is interested in writing a letter to their local representative, of whom can be identified at https://www.nysenate.gov/find-my-senator, are strongly encouraged to write a letter in support of passing the two bills. A letter template can be found at shorturl.at/adLO8.
In addition, other projects derived from the course will soon be underway. Any inquiries can be directed to lamron.news@gmail.com.