{"id":505,"date":"2024-04-08T13:13:32","date_gmt":"2024-04-08T18:13:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/?p=505"},"modified":"2025-03-18T10:25:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T14:25:47","slug":"bu-marks-50-years-of-changing-lives-behind-bars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/2024\/04\/08\/bu-marks-50-years-of-changing-lives-behind-bars\/","title":{"rendered":"BU Marks 50 Years of Changing Lives behind Bars"},"content":{"rendered":"

Community organizer and poet Elizabeth Barker was an untenured instructor at Boston University in the early 1970s when she brought a group of BU students to the medium-security prison MCI Norfolk to compete against men who had created their own version of the popular\u00a0<\/span>College Bowl<\/em>\u00a0<\/span>quiz show on radio and TV while incarcerated there.<\/p>\n

The students lost, and \u201cMa\u201d Barker, as she was known, became a vigorous champion of offering college courses behind prison walls. With the support of John Silber (Hon.\u201995), then BU\u2019s president, the University offered the first courses at\u00a0<\/span>Norfolk<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>in 1972.<\/p>\n

\u201cI go back into my old pictures and see her, and I literally start to cry,\u201d said Sam Williams (MET\u201992,\u201913) last week at a celebration of the\u00a0<\/span>Boston University Metropolitan College Prison Education Program<\/a>. Williams earned a Bachelor of Liberal Studies degree through the program while incarcerated at Norfolk. \u201cShe believed in us back then, when, at least for me, I didn\u2019t believe in myself, and I couldn\u2019t see what the future was going to look like.\u201d<\/p>\n

The celebration of 50 Years of Transformative Education featured speakers and a panel discussion on the future of prison education. More than 100 people attended the event at One Silber Way, which touted the 401 bachelor\u2019s degrees, 28 master\u2019s degrees, and 41 undergraduate certificates awarded since 1990.<\/p>\n

A panelist at the event, Williams also earned a master\u2019s degree from MET and is now executive director of\u00a0<\/span>Concord Prison Outreach<\/a>, a nonprofit organization devoted to transforming the lives of incarcerated people and their families through education, opportunity, and human connection.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would not be here if not for Ma Barker [and others] that came in and really cared about us, and saw some things in us that we couldn\u2019t see in ourselves,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

Barker died in 1989, but the program is still going strong. Each class meets once a week for three hours, and participants can take up to three classes a week, although the schedule can be altered by operational needs at the two facilities where it now operates, Norfolk and MCI Framingham, the state\u2019s women\u2019s prison.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrison education is about hope for a better self and hope for a better life,\u201d said program director\u00a0<\/span>Mary Ellen Mastrorilli<\/a>, a MET associate professor of the practice. \u201cIt\u2019s about access to a human right, that human right being education. It\u2019s about belief in the idea that transformation unlocks human potential.\u201d<\/p>\n

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“Prison education is about hope for a better self and hope for a better life.”<\/div>\n