The students sit at four rows of tables with blue folding chairs.
There is chitchat going on, small talk about fraternity life, banter back and forth, head nodding, laughter. The scene
looks incredibly average given that half of the students in the room are housed in the Putnamville Correctional Facility (PCF).
Modeled on the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program in partnership with the Putnamville Correctional Facility in
Greencastle, the special topics course taught by Associate Professor of Political Science Lorraine McCrary met in the correctional facility with incarcerated individuals. The students read political theory and discussed the relationship between freedom, virtue, and politics.
The presence of Wabash President Scott Feller, an invited guest, along with a few other such guests, is an indication that something is different this day.
“I’m very sad today that the semester is ending,” McCrary says with a quiver in her voice.
With that, she asks the students for their thoughts on their shared classroom experience inside the PCF on their last
afternoon together.
“I’m going to miss you guys,” one starts.
“It’s been a journey,” says another.
“I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this class,” says someone else. “This is one of the best classes I’ve taken. I hated reading Aristotle, but it’s been a great experience.”
“One of the reasons there is a divide in politics is that no one sits around and talks like this,” says another.
“I got to see people on the outside,” chimes in a voice. “They looked at us like we were human beings. This class pushed me to learn. Aristotle was hard and this class helped me open up and understand.”
Fourteen weeks prior, no one was sure how this learning experiment would go. McCrary had her answer.
“It was the best teaching experience of my life,” she says.
Before providing each participant with a certificate and a handshake, Feller marveled at what he had witnessed in this space: a cohesive, supportive, and engaged learning environment as strong as any seen on the Wabash campus.
He thanked the incarcerated population for coming to class each period with respect for their fellow students and the professor. Feller praised them for being active learners and for the obvious positive impacts produced.
Speaking to the Wabash students, he singled out their appreciation for humility and civility and a willingness to stretch their educational experience far beyond campus.
“Professor McCrary drove this from the beginning with passion,” Feller says. “What a gift she’s given to each of them.”
To arrive here wasn’t easy. McCrary’s goal from day one was to emphasize community in a nonhierarchical space, not exactly a simple goal when class would be taught weekly in the prerelease building at the medium security prison outside of Greencastle, Indiana.
Hierarchy is baked into the incarcerated community—security gates and razor wire, administration, guards, pat-downs, and multiple security checkpoints.
McCrary started simple with icebreakers and small-group work so the class of 10 Wabash students and 11 incarcerated personnel (one of whom was released during the semester) could get to know each other.
She learned that the class loved the small-group work and leaned into it as they dove into Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics” and a bit of John Stuart Mill near the end.
“I really encouraged community in a special way, and it’s hard as a professor to do so because building community takes time,” she says. “168体育平台下载_足球即时比分-注册|官网 were sometimes focused on content, but we also focused on that community. I loved to see how it grew in the space.”
McCrary quickly realized that the students developed a sense of responsibility to the others in the class. They would come to class prepared and ready to participate. Only one or two of the students claimed to love reading Aristotle, but they were doing so for one another each time the class met.
Even on his lone visit to class, Feller picked up on that immediately.
“This classroom has the two pieces of the Wabash classroom that I have always found the most satisfying,” he says. “No question, there was a level of comfort, familiarity, and ease with which they interacted with each other, but they also had immense respect for the instructor.”
Interestingly, the incarcerated students took charge of making everyone feel welcome and keeping the conversations going. After all, the class was on their turf. The Wabash students were reserved at first, sort of playing it safe, but in the PCF classroom, they were pushed to speak up. “Hey, we want to hear what you think” was a common refrain.
“As strange as it was to enter the prison and go through the numerous security checkpoints, the second our classmates entered the class, the entire atmosphere immediately shifted in a positive direction,” says Silas Mills ’27, a political science major from Indianapolis. “Their willingness to vocalize their shared experiences and their genuine interest in us made it easy to engage with the material and with our classmates. I cannot overstate the impact that each of these men had on our lives.”
The most transformative aspect for Ryan Whitacre ’27, a PPE major from Hoagland, Indiana, was how the incarcerated students applied philosophical concepts directly to their lived experiences, influencing McCrary’s approach and encouraging Wabash students to bring their whole selves to their work.
“The Putnamville students constantly related the text to their own lives, which made it impossible not to apply the
text to mine,” he says. “Whether it was the virtue of courage or the virtue of temperance, we discussed as a group
how these ideas applied to our lives and the issues we see.”
Feller admits the logistics were challenging, but the rewards were immense for all of the participants.
“Some of those guys got pushed to do things they never would have without such an intense experience,” he says. “168体育平台下载_足球即时比分-注册|官网 moved people out of their comfort zones, took them to a place that lacks any familiarity, and helped them learn in a new environment. You could tell that it opened their minds to learn new things in a different way. They could learn about Aristotle in Center Hall or Baxter Hall, but the upsides were 10 times more than I imagined.”
Whitacre agrees, saying, “It was refreshing to hear so many different ideas and perspectives. You only learn so much from people who are like you. This course is the one in which I learned life lessons outside of the course material. The
experience was incredibly eye-opening to the reality of others’ struggles in the world. I walked away with a lesson and a view into a part of the world I had not seen.”
For McCrary, the benefit of the experience lies in what they created together, and her thoughts went back to those
incarcerated students.
“Maybe they think of themselves as Wabash students, right?” she says. “168体育平台下载_足球即时比分-注册|官网 had this transformative experience in which we weren’t just ourselves, we were members of this class. The community became something more than
us. You benefit from those relationships, that friendship, that community. What do we owe each other for putting ourselves out there in this way? It’s a debt you can’t repay. All you can do is honor it.”