These biweekly trips are part of the class "Inside Out: Prison, Women and Performance," which is taught by Schweitzer and Pati Hernandez, founder of "Telling My Story," a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing theater to prisons.
As the students and the inmates learn from each other, Signe Taylor is filming the class to create an hour-long documentary, she said a project inspired by her experiences filming the class's final presentation several years ago.
During each class meeting, which occurs at the 2A hour, half the class travels to the Sullivan County House a medium security prison while the other half attends a seminar on campus, Schweitzer said. This structure creates a balance between theory and application, Schweitzer said.
The course brings students to the Sullivan County House where Hernandez leads activities such as African drumming and dancing with the prisoners. Students also work with inmates to produce their plays at this time.
The themes for the skits that students and prisoners are producing this term are words four negative and four positive such as support and honesty, according to Master of Arts of Liberal Studies student Josh Labove, a student in the class.
After the skits, students and inmates give 30-second testimonials consisting of both personal and social reflection, according to Schweitzer.
"The testimonies of the women prisoners usually talk about overcoming a sense of low self-esteem, shyness, abjection a sense of not being entitled to be listened to or not being entitled to be heard," Schweitzer said. "Nobody cares about them, nobody recognizes them."
During the performances, audience members often have trouble distinguishing between students and inmates, Schweitzer said.
"What many people have said to me is they can't tell who are the prisoners and who are the students, and that's one of our goals," she said. "On a human level, there really aren't any differences."
Traveling to the prison was a "startling" experience, according to Rachel Sarnoff '12, a student in the class.
"It's a harsh environment," Sarnoff said. "The metal doors are really loud and the guards are friendly to us, but they're very patronizing."
Students cannot exchange any items with the inmates and must pass through a metal detector so strong that it can detect a bobby bin before entering the facility, according to Sarnoff.
"We feel that environment of distrust every time we go in there," Sarnoff said.
At their first meeting, however, prisoners and students exchanged hugs something that students did not recognize as significant until they saw the non-contact visiting room, Sarnoff said.
"These women haven't touched their children in months and months and they got to hug us on the first day," she said, explaining that the students are not always required to follow visitation rules as strictly as other visitors.
Rules at the prison normally require that visitors refrain from referring to inmates by their first names, although the students are not held to the policy, Sarnoff said.
The community-based structure of the class creates an opportunity for learning unlike any other class at the College, Labove said.
"It's unpredictable," he said. "It's the kind of class that you don't know what's going to come next."
While other classes have strict syllabi and structured midterms, the class's emotional taxation as well as the logistical complications of transporting students to and from the Sullivan County House each creates a perpetual state of "discomfort," Labove said.
"I've never seen a course with as many moving parts as this one," he said.
Although the class is demanding, students learn a lot by adjusting to experiences in which they are forced to "go with the flow," Labove said.
"You don't ever get into that comfortable lull," he said. "There's no easy coasting in this class, but I wouldn't trade it for anything."
Both Schweitzer and Labove spoke of the value of community-based learning, citing the unique opportunity to put academic theories to practical use.
"I was really glad when [College President Jim Yong Kim] was appointed president because I know he's really supportive of community-based learning," Schweitzer said.
The experience this summer has caused many students in the class to question the inequalities inherent in the U.S. prison system, Sarnoff said.
"Yes, these women committed crimes, but their punishment or their treatment is not equal to their crime," she said. "They're being punished for something that we see on this campus or that other people do and get away with simply because of their privileged status in life."
Although students were made familiar with the type of crimes committed by the inmates at the beginning of the term, the stories that the class focuses on are not based upon the inmates' criminal activity. Rather, the plays focus on the many factors that brought the inmates to that point in their lives, Sarnoff said.
While students in the class have also been affected by their experiences at the prison, the class's impact extends beyond students at the College. Taylor said she did not know what to expect when she first agreed to a freelance job filming the project's final performance of its inaugural year.
"I really knew next to nothing," Taylor said. "I was going in blind, it was very intense."
One member of the 2006 cast seemed to direct her testimonial at Taylor, she said. The woman, a filmmaker who worked on a documentary about finding the geographical center of the United States before she was arrested, discussed her drug addiction and the consequences of imprisonment.
"What made her most sad was that she'd never have children," Taylor said.
Taylor said she had originally assumed that the inmate was a MALS student. The woman's age, profession, clothing and even her hair cut were all identical to her own, Taylor said.
"I was looking basically at my twin," Taylor said. "It was a very shaking experience."
The experience inspired Taylor to film future final performances for the group, she said. This summer, she decided to film the entire class experience throughout the term to create an hour-long documentary.
