The
question I want you to address in Option #1 is What can listening
and reflecting on the stories of the homeless teach us about the American
economy, Christian obligation towards the poor, and the practice
of justice? More specifically, in this paper I want you to use the
voices of the homeless that you'll encounter and reflect upon them
in light of the readings we do and the discussions we have about how the
American economic system works, how Christian belief motivates a
concern for justice in the world, and what justice requires for the
economically marginalized. "Reflection" literally means to bend or turn
backwards (so we speak about light reflecting, for example). So what I
want you to do in this project is use your experiences as raw data that
you then look back upon (as if looking in a mirror) and describe what you
see in light of what we read and talk about in "Catholic Social Thought."
The South
Bend Center for the Homeless has been
recognized as a national leader for its comprehensive services and
continuum of care model. One of the ways that its success benefits the
community is as an educational presence. The Center and its guests can
help us learn things about homelessness (and by extension, the American
economy and Christian obligation to practice justice) that we couldn't
learn otherwise. This first project option offers you the opportunity to
really learn first-hand about homelessness by volunteering your time
through becoming an intern at the Center and writing a reflective essay
about your experiences that addresses the underlined question above.
Let me first say a word about logistics and then go on to specify the
assignment. This internship program is being coordinated for this
course through Peter Lombardo who is the Assistant Director of Community
Involvement at
the Center (phone: 282-8700, ext. 344; or e-mail). At the beginning of
each semester, the Center conducts a number of orientations for new
volunteers from the community. Once down there (maps are available
online), Peter will acquaint you with the Center and take you through
the
initial steps toward securing a volunteer assignment for yourself. By the
way, I'd encourage you to carpool down to the Center in (at least) pairs
so that you have people to speak with on the way home about your
experiences during your volunteer shift.
You will start volunteering before we begin discussing homelessness or
Catholic teachings on social and economic justice. And once we get
to the relevant section of the course, you'll then inherit a vocabulary of
concepts and ideas that will help you better understand and
process your experience.
There are
basically two kinds of tracks for interning at the Center. (a) The
first kind involves volunteering for a set number of hours. I require
that you volunteer a minimum of 20 hours over the course of
this semester (including the 1.5-hour orientation, which is usually made
up
of a 45-minute general overview of the Center, followed by about 45
minutes of more specific training for your volunteer placement). If you
can make a bigger time commitment than 20 hours this semester, I guarantee
you'll get more out of your placement, which may very well help you
assemble a better paper at the end. I know that 20 hours seems like a
lot, but if you spread it out over the semester until the project is due,
it will be much more manageable. Please understand that this time
requirement benefits the Center, which would rather not go to the time to
train someone who won't invest adequate time in return. (b) The
second kind of internship involves completing a specific project down at
the Center. The hours you put in would depend upon the project you do.
Because the Center's needs are fluid from year to year, I cannot specify
your particular options here. You'd have to speak with Peter about what
needs the Center currently has and what your own interests are. This
could be a great option for someone in a particular major to do something
that meshes closely with what you're learning in other classes. If you
have a particular issue or question that you'd like to explore about
homelessness, this could be a great opportunity to dialogue with people
living with that reality. For your project paper, you could then focus
the more general question I underlined above towards the particular
project on which you're working. For example, you could learn an awful
lot about people's lives and challenges by working with guests on resumé writing. Because you'd be working on a project, rather than a
regular volunteer assignment, this option could allow a bit more
flexibility in scheduling your time at the Center. It also allows you to get
really creative in the kinds of things you do, as these students from a previous
semester did.
No matter which of these you choose, you will need to attend an
orientation. Here are
the relevant
dates and
times for the orientations:
As rewarding as it might be to work with homeless children, it's important
for the successful completion of this project that you have regular
interaction with adult guests. So here are the
position descriptions of the possible internships you can
have at the Center. Anywhere from 1-5 students can receive the same
placement; but from the Center's perspective, it would be most helpful if
the group that signs up for this project option is interested in a variety
of different placements. You can either sign up for one now (the
advantage to
doing so would be that you might get closed out later on if there's
something you're really interested in, but too many others sign up for
that ahead
of you), OR you can wait until the orientation at the
Center
to indicate your preference at that time. If you want more information
about any of these opportunities, please contact Peter Lombardo in any of
the
ways listed above, or take a look at the Center's volunteer page. Again, I
cannot predict which of these areas might
have a specific project that needs to be accomplished in it should you
wish to do the second kind of internship listed above. That would be
something to investigate once you have your orientation. Of the above options, the Front Desk, and Adult
Education
are
the placements
that involve the most one-on-one contact with guests. Community
Involvement and Family Services will also teach interns quite a lot
about homelessness. I also strongly encourage attending a
Monday Night Meeting at
some point during
the semester. During these sessions new guests are welcomed and have
an opportunity to tell about themselves, Center issues are ironed out,
and usually interesting presentations are given. Each one can teach a lot
about homelessness, especially hearing specific
stories from a wide range of individuals (that often helps
educate people more than statistics do).
NOTE: It is that once you make a commitment to the Center, you
show up for all of your scheduled assignments unless an emergency comes up
and you notify the Center. Not only the guests, but also the other Center
staff, will be inconvenienced by your absence. And not going will
obviously interfere with your successful completion of this project.
Also a key concept is that coming on a regular basis throughout the
semester is by far the most helpful option (as compared with loading
up on the hours at the beginning or the end of the semester).
It's really important that you not wait until after all of your
volunteering is done before you start writing. You should get a much
better result if you contribute bits and pieces to this paper (almost like journal entries)
over several weeks. What I'll ask
you to do at the end is just tie the pieces together as coherently as you
can as you reflect back upon your experiences from a more informed
perspective and assess
where you have come in this section of the course and what you have
learned about the economy, Catholic social teaching, and the practice of
justice. It's been said that 'experience needs to be interrogated'; and
that's what I want you to do: interrogate your experiences at the Center
using the tools that you'll have at your disposal through our course.
This is
why reflection on your time at the Center becomes absolutely crucial; and
also why service at the Center is a wholly appropriate part of a college
course.
Second, for the rest of your visits to the Center, you should be
thinking
very carefully about how what you are experiencing (and have experienced
already) fits into what we're reading and discussing in class. At the time
of your initial volunteer work at the Center, we still would not have
gotten
to the section of the course on homelessness; and so you'll still be very
much on your own in terms of the ideas and impressions that you're
recording at this point. Writing about this first stage of your
volunteering will help you chart how much you end up learning through this
experience about homelessness. After your first and second
volunteer shifts, set down on paper (perhaps as one of the journal entries
I'll describe below) your initial impressions about
volunteering at the Center. As both the course and your own work at the
Center continues, you'll start to reflect on
how your internship made any of the readings or concepts from the
course more understandable or tangible for you? How did the
foundational concepts of Catholic social teaching (dignity, community, and
preferential option) become more than just concepts? What came alive for
you? That is, how did you see the above concepts exhibited before you or
experienced within you? And in light of these things, assess your own
initial views. How accurate were they? And if your initial views were
distorted or incomplete, why do you think they were? What led you to
them? Where did those distortions or omissions come from?
To accomplish all of these things, I'd like you to keep something like a
journal for each time you visit the Center to volunteer. These will, I
think, be useful to you when you go to tie everything together at the end.
That is, the journal will serve as raw material for the finished paper. I
would like you to hand in these reflections along with the finished paper.
Use one piece of paper for each time you go down to the Center to
volunteer, put the
date at the top, divide the page as follows, and briefly fill in under
each heading:
[1] Objective: What happened during your shift today? Don't
evaluate--just give the facts. Namely, give an objective account of what
you did, where you worked, with whom you came in contact, and so on. You
might include brief quotations of what guests said to you today.
[2] Subjective: Now, describe your perceptions, thoughts,
and
feelings about what happened. Probably the best way to get at what's most
central in your experience, where the learning moment can most go on, is
to ask yourself, 'What made me wonder today?' or 'What surprised me?'
[3] Reflective: How can you link what happened today to
other things
(your own prior views, what we're talking about or reading in this course,
other things you've read or known or have experienced, discussions with or
viewpoints of others, and so on)? If the previous question opened up the
issues by asking what made you wonder, this one asks for some reflective
resolution, 'What became clearer for me today?'
The paper that comes out of all of this should use all of the above pieces
to construct a coherent reflection about what your experiences with the
homeless have taught you about the American economy, the source
and nature of the Christian obligation toward the poor, and the nature
and practice of justice. All of these issues should prominently enter into
your essay. Obviously, these topics are intertwined, and the most
successful essays will integrate them into a (semi-) seamless whole.
There are a multitude of readings in the XP which will discuss the
contribution of Christianity to this issue and why doing justice is an
integral part of what it means to follow Jesus. (Romero will deal
with
the same themes.) There's lots
of online help for this as well.
As I said above, I want this third assignment to be less rigid in its
format and content. How you organize things is largely up to you. The
only constraints are that it should read well and address the issues I
asked you about above. One of the most important pieces of advice I can
give you about volunteering is that you ought not to think that the only
ones benefiting from your time at the Center are the homeless individuals
you meet and work with. Rather, be open to receiving from those with whom you come
into contact. At the very least, they will be your teachers about
homelessness. They will teach you things that you would not or could not
have learned without this encounter.
True--you are giving, but you are also getting back.
EVALUATION: In addition to the usual criteria listed on pp.
6-7 of your
syllabus, you'll be graded on how thoroughly you analyze your initial
views, how well you understand and synthesize the material from this
section of the course, and how informed are the reasons you use to develop
your views for how and why Christians are required by their faith to work
for justice. (Make sure the distinction between charity and justice comes
out in your essay.) I'll especially be looking for how thoroughly you
integrate your experiences as a volunteer with the other elements of the
paper. Obviously, I don't want in the finished paper just a straight
summary of what you did. (I'll get a lot of that from reading your
journal entries.) Rather,
selectively use your experiences as
illustrations as you present your reflections on the American
economy,
the source and nature of the Christian obligation toward the poor, and
the nature and practice of justice. So don't hesitate to recount
selected or notable
events from your journal, tell stories, quote statements that guests made,
describe people that made the
concepts you're
dealing with in this paper (and that we'll be dealing with in the third
part of the course on social and economic justice) come alive for you
through your experiences as a volunteer. Things that you experiences that
were most eye-opening for you would probably make the most interesting
reading for me! A specific rubric for this project option is
available here.
FORMAT: Your paper should be about 6 - 8 pages typed and
double-spaced (+
1 'journal' page for each visit). Number your pages. You should
title your
essay, but do not include a separate title page. A thesis is not required
in this paper, as long as you address the question underlined
above in the first paragraph. You're welcome to use a thesis if that helps
you; and if you use
one, form it around your response to the underlined question. Put your
ID# on the checklist
you turn in with your paper; though because of the nature of
this assignment, you need only fill out the top part of the checklist (=
the part above your ID#) if you don't use a thesis. Your completed project
is
due at the start of class on Wednesday, April 16th.
RELEASE FORM: Because this project involves going out into
the community, you must sign and submit a standard
release form before you take your first trip down to the Center.
orientation and training session. The times for these are 6:00-7:30 PM
on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 or Wednesday, February 6,
2008.
Try to go to the January orientation if you can, since it's really
important
that you get an early start on your involvement at the Center. Depending
on how many students sign up for this option, we
might also schedule a volunteer orientation specifically for Saint Mary's
students on some evening that works for everyone. If you go to one of the
general orientations, make sure to tell
Peter before the session begins that you are a "Catholic Social Thought"
student.
First, before going down to the volunteer orientation at the Center
and
before going too deeply into this issue, jot down your initial impressions
of who's homeless in America today and why. (This early writing may be
very useful to you later on as you compare your concluding perceptions
with your very first ones and try to articulate what you learned and why.)
So think about what kinds of people are
homeless? What do homeless people look like? what do they sound like? how
do they act? In short, what images come to mind when you think of
homeless people And why are people homeless in this land of plenty? Is
it the case that any person or family who, without any direct fault of
their own, does not have suitable housing is the victim of an injustice?
Do people have a fundamental right to shelter? Or do people lack shelter
primarily due to factors that they themselves can control? In light of
these initial impressions, address what you hope to gain by volunteering
at the Center.
This option gives you a unique opportunity to meet and share with
lower-income individuals from the South Bend community. You will come to a
clearer understanding of the
reality of the so-called working poor in America
(namely, those who hold down full-time jobs but who still can't live much
above a subsistence level). In the process, you will learn about local
history and social conditions. You may also grow to see yourself in a new
light and be encouraged to think deeply about what it means to be "the
other" in our society. This project option will allow you to meet the
working poor and, on the basis of that encounter, to construct a
critical analysis of the conditions of the working poor (and, by
extension, of the
realities of the American economy) in light of the main concepts of
Catholic social thought: dignity, community, and preferential option for
the poor.
You will "meet" the working poor in two ways: First, you will read
about them. Second, you will meet and speak with them
and allow others' life experiences and insights to help you write your paper.
This meetings will
come through the coordination of Bonnie Bazata, who is the Director for
Community Connections in the CWIL office. (I would encourage you to e-mail her if you have questions
about this option.)
Let
me say a word about each of these components.
To learn more about this population of Americans, I'd like to you to read
one of the following two books. As you read, consider these questions:
What strikes you as you read this book? What difficulties do the working
poor have in making ends meet? How were those difficulties caused and
how
might they be remedied? How (ironically) do the working poor in
this country support the rich? How do the well-off see (or worse yet,
sometimes fail to see) the plight of the working poor? How can
those in lower-paying jobs afford medical care, shelter, and provide a
decent life for their
children? What changes would you make in the structures which
lead
to the suffering these authors witnessed?
What I request from you in this paper is to bring these two sources
(print
and personal) of your education on the working poor together and evaluate
them in light of the main ideas and themes from the Church's tradition of
social teaching.
To help
you prepare your paper, I'd like you to keep something like a journal of
your experience(s) for both of your off-campus events and for the on-campus capstone.
Hand your four journal entries in with your final paper. Use one piece of
paper for each, put the
date at the top, divide the page as follows, and briefly fill in under
each heading:
[1] Objective: What did I do today? Don't
evaluate--just give the facts. Namely, give an objective account of what
you saw, where you went, what you did (if applicable), whom you came in
contact with, and so on.
[2] Subjective: Now, describe your perceptions,
thoughts,
and
feelings about what you experienced. Probably the best way to get at
what's most
central in your experience, where the learning moment can most go on, is
to ask yourself, 'What made me wonder today?' or 'What surprised me?'
[3] Reflective: How can you link what happened today to
other things
(your own prior views, what we're talking about or reading in this course
or in the Ehrenreich or Shipler books,
other things you've read or known or have experienced, discussions with
or
viewpoints of others, and so on)? If the previous question opened up the
issues by asking what made you wonder, this one asks for some reflective
resolution, 'What became clearer for me today?'
For about the first two-thirds of the paper, imagine yourself as someone
you met in this experience, someone who knows poverty from the inside. This could be a particular
individual you met or a compilation of several. What about your life now
would be different? As you imagine yourself to be this other person, what
would you say to a Saint Mary's student (such as you!) about your living
conditions and opportunities? Finally, for the final third of the paper,
move back into your own skin and identity and describe how you now think
about the issues raised in "Catholic Social Thought" about the Church's
teachings on poverty, social justice, and the economy, especially
in light of the fundamental concepts of dignity, community, and
preferential option for the poor.
EVALUATION:
In addition to the usual criteria listed on pp. 6-7 of your syllabus, you'll
be graded on the depth of your evaluation and
how you integrate your
other sources into that reflection. I will be looking carefully at how
you synthesize the material from the Church's social
tradition into what you have learned about the working poor. The essay
about the living wage by William P. Quigley (XP Vol. II, pp. 105-109) might be
another good source for you. A specific rubric for this project option is
available here.
FORMAT:
Your paper should be about 8 pages typed and double-spaced. Number your
pages, and give your essay a title.
Because of the nature of this assignment, you need not include a thesis
statement, but you're welcome to use one if you wish. Be sure to
include a checklist
with your paper. If you don't use a
thesis statement, just fill out the top part of the checklist (= the part
above your ID#). Anything that comes directly from either book should
be cited directly in the text in parentheses immediately after the
quotation, as in (Nickel and Dimed, p. 17).
Your completed project is
due at the start of class on Wednesday, April 16th.
RELEASE FORM: Because this project involves going out into
the community, you must sign and submit a standard
release form before you take your first trip down to the Center.
Stranger With a Camera
This required meeting during the week of February 25th (exact time and date TBA) will involve a
showing
of the
movie Stranger with
a Camera, which has been called "one of the best
documentaries ever made." You may read a review here.
The film raises questions about who has the right to
tell someone else's story and so is meant to motivate your thinking about
how we encounter 'the other,' even when we're encountering the
other out of concern for that person (or persons) and with a desire to
improve their living conditions. There will be a brief
discussion following the movie.
The third option concerns capital punishment. As you'll read in Dead Man Walking, what led to Sr. Helen Prejean's experiences with death row inmates was writing a letter to a convicted murderer. This paper option will allow you to correspond with someone on death row to learn about capital punishment in ways otherwise inaccessible to most people.
There
are several ways to correspond with someone on death row through
the following websites.
[a] Cyberspace
Inmates. This site,
run by Rev. Rene Mulkey, categorizes a large number of death row prisoners
by last names and provides personal statements from each person describing
his situation and desire for correspondence.
[b] The
Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty's Penpal Requests are
organized by U.S. state and frequently features a picture of the inmate
along with a personal statement.
[c] Voices
from Inside Texas Death Row: lots of personal statements from the
state that executes more than any other. There are a few inmates here who
speak only Spanish. This would be a great opportunity for someone
majoring or minoring in that language!
[d] Pen Pal Requests from Virginia's
Death Row: names, addresses and personal statements of prisoners
from
Virginia's death row (but no pictures). There is at least one woman
listed for correspondence. This site also tells you about
the mail
restrictions for incoming correspondence.
[e] Write a
prisoner: Click on "On Death Row" and then "Search Now" to get
to
the death row section. This site gives you a great deal of information on
each prisoner including the crime for which he or she (there are at least
two women on this site) is on death row. writeaprisoner.com also allows
you to email your first
correpondence to the inmate (the site prints it out and snail-mails it to
the prisoner). If you select "Female" in addition to "On Death Row,"
you'll get a listing of a couple women.
[f] Extensive collection of links to
individual death row inmates in Texas, Mississippi, Penn, Ohio, Alabama,
Arizona, and Florida
[g] Death Row Speaks: Click on
"Inmates/Profiles" and then select either "Federal death row,""State
death row" or "Military death row" to get a list of names and addresses. In addition to the
profiles, this site features inmate art, poetry, and writings. There's
also a section entitled "Ask Death Row" where you can leave questions for
inmates to answer, or read their answers to previous questions left by
others.
[h] Other inmate correspondence groups are
collected at this
site.
[i] Women
on death row: There
are relatively very few women on death row (approximately 60 in the entire
country, or about 1.5% of the nation's death row population).
Perhaps as a partial result of this, there are no specific websites
dedicated to correspondence only with women on death row. I indicated
which of the above sites have at least some listings for female death row
inmates (some students in the past have also found several
female death row prisoners through the Canadian Coalition site). There is
also a list
of these women along with a description of their crimes.
Obviously, this doesn't mean that these women are open to receiving and
returning your correspondence (unlike those prisoners listed at the
other sites above). But if you wish to write to female death row
prisoners and are up for a challenge, you can probably find the addresses
of prisons housing these women. Each state that executes only has one
prison in that state housing female death row inmates. So if you find the
state of a woman on death row, you can be pretty confident that she's at
the prison on this chart listed for that particular state. Another way to
find the location of a female death row population in a given state is to
look at State-by-State
Information" on the death penalty, select a particular state and then
look over to the right under the Category "Location of Death Row(s)."
Another source of addresses for women on death row is here. Only a few CST
students have received mail back from a woman on death row. But given our
identity as a women's college and in light of the special issues that come
up for women on death row, I certainly want to present this option for
your consideration.
Life is not the same from one prison to the next. Think about writing to
inmates in a variety of prisons and states. This will allow you to get a
broad perspective of what prisons are like and will give you a chance to
compare and contrast how different prisons work. Some states
execute inmates more often than others. If you write to one or two
inmates living in a state known for its high number of executions, your
correspondent will be more likely to have known someone who has been
executed or could be facing imminent execution him- or herself.
Writing
to prisoners convicted of horrible crimes is, of course, not meant to
excuse
anyone's behavior or inspire pity for people who may have refused it to
others. But it is designed as a learning experience for you. Now, some
suggestions: First, as you read some of the descriptions that the
prisoners offer about themselves, you'll
notice that some may be interested primarily in romance. Within the
context
of this class, I would strongly discourage you from writing to
them. Others,
as you'll see, just want some connection with any person outside prison
walls. Many, as you'll also see, are all alone, having been abandoned by
their families. Second, I would encourage you to write to more than
one prisoner (at least 3). You need not produce a form letter (indeed--if
you're writing to more than one person at the same prison, form letters
only arouse suspicion), but you can write much the same things to each.
Writing to more than one would be helpful in the context of this
assignment
because it's certainly possible that you might not get return mail from
everyone to whom you write; and so this would give you some backups.
(Related
to this, you should try to get your initial letters out as soon as
possible
to allow for the lag time in receiving a response. Some prisons
aren't
exactly prompt in
delivering mail to death row inmates either. (And by the way, if you'd
like to send some
stamps to your prisoner(s) to encourage quicker replies, ask your
correspondent first if
that's okay since some prisons don't allow loose stamps but may allow
stamp booklets.
Violating a particular prison's rules might cause your mail to be held up
or returned.) Also,
if you do receive mail back from more than one person, you'll have the
possibility of some
nice comparisons and contrasts in their views when you come to analyze
their responses.
What should I do if no one writes me back?
As sometimes happens, you may get
letters back from everyone to whom you write. If you don't want to
correspond with them all, you might think about passing one or more off to
another student in class who hasn't received anything back from anyone to
whom she's written.
Certainly, it is possible (and it
has happened in the past) that you write to three prisoners
and get nothing back. That's another reason to begin writing as early
as you can so that you could write to another group of prisoners
if no one in the first group writes back. If all else fails, and you
still having gotten anything back by (approximately) mid-semester break,
then you should think about getting your information some other way.
Fortunately, there are books and websites you can consult to get something
like the experience of
writing to prisoners. You should consult at least one of the following
back-ups:
What
I want from you: First, I would like copies (either the
originals or copies of the originals) of what you write
and what you get back. Second, I would like 6 - 8
pages
of reflections about this exercise in which you describe what you have
learned through your correspondence, how your perceptions about death
row inmates have been
affected by your correspondence, and what conclusions this assignment has
led you to about capital punishment. What you end up writing for your
final paper will in large part depend on what you get back from your
inmates. For example, if you receive letters back from more than one
person, you might think about arranging your paper thematically to set up
some comparison and contrast between what different inmates wrote to you.
Perhaps they both commented on their families or their surroundings or
their trials, etc. If you receive mail back from only one person, you
might try to put that person's reflections in a wider context in light of
the readings assigned for the death penalty section of the course. Please
feel free to arrange your own comments in whatever way you think best
expressed what you learned and is most coherent in terms of the
organization of the essay. It's difficult to be more specific than this,
because as I said above, so much does depend on what (and how much) you
get back in your correspondence. If you're unsure about how to begin
writing your final paper, come see me and bring your letters. If I have a
clearer sense of what you've received, I would most likely have more
productive suggestions.
EVALUATION:
In
addition to the usual criteria listed on pp. 6-7 of your syllabus,
you'll be graded on the depth of your reflections on capital punishment
in light of the letters you receive back, especially as they are informed
by the readings from that section of the course. That is, I'll primarily
be looking to see what you did with the information you received back from
the inmates and how well you used it to advance your own reflections and
come to your own insights that dig beneath the surface to say things that
are new and interesting. The more correspondence you're able to have with
the same person (namely, letters in which you respond back to your inmate
and she or he writes back to you), the better , as this should allow you
to pursue things you're interested about and come to a deeper grasp of
that person's life and the death penalty in general.
More specifically, I'll be looking for how well you combine
events, background or views from the letters you received back
from the prisoners with your own reflections. Certainly, I don't
just want you to summarize what they said in their letters. I do
want you to make use of what they said (events, people, narrative
description) as you lay out your own
ideas about the death penalty. You'll note that the way Sr. Helen
Prejean discusses capital punishment is through stories. Try to
do the same kind of thing. Judiciously chosen quotations from the
letters you got back should
intersperse your own narration. Describe events, profile people, tell
stories, include and analyze your correspondent's views and opinions on
capital
punishment, prison
life, crime, and so on. In short, make robust use of the details in
your prisoners'
letters, but integrate them well with your own views and your own
organization of the material. And your
views will be much more substantial if informed by a careful
reading of the material on capital punishment listed on the
syllabus for April 16, 18, and 21; and I'll be evaluating
your paper in light of how you made use of these other readings
and sources of information. There's also a tremendous amount of
very good
background on the web
about capital punishment., and see the CST
website's recommended
links for April 18. A specific rubric for this project option is
available here.
FORMAT:
For
this third paper option, follow a similar format as in the other two
options. Number your pages. But you can just put your name for this one
since you'll
be pretty
easily identifiable from your letters! Come up with some way of
referencing your letters so that I can better follow what you're drawing
from and where. So for example, you might give each letter you receive
from a particular person a letter, and follow that letter with a page
numbers (as in "Inmate's name, Letter A, Page 3"). That's just an
example. If you can come up with something that does the same thing,
feel free to use it. Be sure also to turn in a checklist
with your paper; though
because of the nature of this assignment, you need only fill out the top
part of the checklist (= the part above your ID#). Your completed project
is
due at the start of class on Wednesday, April 16th. Note:
If you want to read about other "Catholic Social Thought" students who
have done this project in years past, you might consult a December, 2000
article
from The
Cleveland Plain Dealer, which (among other things) described this
"Catholic Social Thought" assignment and interviewed one former student
who did it. You might also benefit from reading an essay written by
a
recent CST student that ended up getting published in a death penalty
newsletter.
Lastly,
I need to say this, because the following issue always comes up: You may
be wondering, 'Will the person to whom I write show up for dinner some
night carrying his own cutlery?' One cannot truthfully say that there is
absolutely no risk attached in corresponding with someone who has
committed
very violent acts. But it is also true to say that none of my students
has ever felt endangered, and there has never been a case
that I know of in which a death row prisoner has been released (in itself,
rare--and they don't get released unless they were innocent anyway!) or
has escaped (rarer still) and made unwanted contact with his or her
correspondent.
Obviously, it is possible that your correspondent may try to manipulate
you, con you into sending him or her money, ask you for more personal information than you want to give
(requests for photos are not uncommon), or respond with hostility
toward your
inquiries. If you receive any responses which make you confused or
anxious, you should see me and bring your letters. In the words of one of
these online services, "This sounds all
very serious, but it should be mentioned. Usually though your pen-pal will
be someone who has been very lonely and is very glad to receive your
letters.
Most inmates do write back very quickly. You will discover that the inmate
is as good a friend to you as you are to him/her." If you have additional
questions, concerns, fears about writing to someone on death row, please
do look at the extremely helpful "Frequently
Asked Questions"about writing to
prisoners, including important points about privacy.
Third, students frequently ask what they should write in their
initial letters. My advice is to be fairly brief. Don't bombard
someone
right away with very personal questions. Some inmates will write back and
say that they're willing to be asked about (literally) anything. Others
will be more guarded. You should get a sense of what's fair to ask and
what's off limits based upon the tone and content of the initial letter
you receive back. You're certainly free to share however much or little
information you may wish to about yourself as
well. You should definitely say that you're writing for a college class
just so your correspondent has full disclosure about your
intentions. I also tend to encourage students in the initial letter to
ask mostly factual questions just to set a foundation for later on.
Factual questions would include inquiries about their physical surrounding
or what their days are like. Some students also come up with clever ways
to ask people 'who are you as a person?' (we all tend to like to talk
about ourselves!). There may also be things on their individual ads for
correspondence that you can pick up on (hobbies, interests, etc.) and that
wouldn't be regarded as too intrusive too soon. What
you write in your later correspondence is up to you, but you might think
about asking about how they ended up on death row,
what they now think about the crimes they committed,
what their hopes and fears are, what they think people on the outside need
to know about life on death row, and so on. As there is certainly time
between now and when your paper is due for an exchange of more than one
letter, you might want to establish contact first before asking for deeper
details of their lives or actions. Whatever way you approach it, though,
let them teach you about how someone comes to be on death
row and what it's like to be there.
Fourth, if you feel better using a pseudonym in your letters,
that's up to you. (Or, some students just use their first names in the
correspondence. If you want to use a pseudonym, you might think about
using your first name + your middle name as your last name) And you don't
want to
include your own return address, you can put mine down, and
I could forward
the mail to you; e.g., "[your name], c/o Prof.
Joseph Incandela,
Saint Mary's College, 68 Madeleva Hall, Notre Dame, IN,
46556." Finally,
even though you're writing for this class, I would ask that
you be (at least) open to more correspondence than just writing during
the semester, perhaps getting some letters back and never writing again.
And certainly this doesn't help future students of "Catholic Social
Thought"
who may be interested in doing this assignment. If prisoners feel used
by this assignment, they may well decide not to participate in the future.
Along these lines, and depending upon whom you write to, you
could certainly get back an angry rejection for further correspondence, if
a student from a previous semester just sent a few letters and
abruptly discontinued writing after her assignment was turned in.