News

Freshman Learning Community paints murals at Riker’s Island

At left, Faith Fernandes (left) and Amanda Bocek (right), two Wagner College  freshmen, paint a mural at the New York City jail on Riker’s Island last fall

     STATEN ISLAND, N.Y., March 13, 2007 — Last fall, Wagner College sent 15 freshmen to New York City’s notorious Riker’s Island jail.

    No, they hadn’t done anything wrong; it was just a part of their Wagner curriculum.
    The assignment: design a couple of uplifting murals depicting civil-rights leaders, and paint those murals on a wall inside Riker’s.

    The project was part of Wagner College’s signature “learning communities” program, a central feature of the school’s “practical liberal arts” curriculum that combines classroom learning with real-world applications and real-people community service.
    LC-21, the group assigned to the Riker’s Island mural project, consisted of 15 students, mostly drama majors, led by Wagner Theater Department dramaturge Felicia Ruff and assistant art professor Jennifer Toth. Once the students had created their designs, they worked with their counterparts in Riker’s Horizon Academy, a “behind the walls” school program for the youngest jail inmates, to paint the full-sized murals.
    At the end of the project, Ruff and Toth asked the members of LC-21 to write anonymously about the experience — a final assignment that uncovered some moving memories.

 

Describe your initial reaction when your professors told you that you would be painting a mural at a prison on Riker’s Island, wrote Ruff in the series of reflective questions she gave the students to help them analyze their semester. What did your parents say? What about your friends?

    “When my professors announced to the class that we were going to jail,” one student wrote, “I thought it was just one of their personal jokes that none of us got. … When I told my friends, they just laughed and said, ‘Your school would do that!’ ”

    Most of the members of LC-21 said they experienced varying degrees of anxiety when they first heard about the assignment.

    “I knew nothing about prison life,” wrote one student. “My nervous feelings about the field trip were based on stereotypes I had seen in movies.”

    “I kept picturing scenes from ‘The Shawshank Redemption,’ like walking down a dark, damp corridor that smelled like rotting food and being grabbed at by inmates,” another student wrote. “I was not looking forward to this trip.

    “Upon arriving at Riker’s Island, my initial vision of a dark and haunting cement building diminished. The building resembled more of a high school and didn’t appear that intimidating.”

    According to the Wagner students, most of their parents voiced concerns about the project but thought it would be a good experience for their sons and daughters.

    “My dad tried to pretend that he thought it was cool,” one student confided, “when I knew he was actually sprouting more gray hair [over the idea].”

Did your experience meet your expectation? asked Ruff. If so, how? And how did your experience differ from what you expected? Explain at least one preconception that your experience defied.
    Jenny Toth recalled one experience of her own that really brought home to her the brutality of life on Riker’s Island. Toth noticed an unusual knife that a guard had used to open one of her class’s supply boxes. When she asked him about it, the guard told her that it was a hook they used “to cut down inmates after they’d hanged themselves.”
    According to Toth, the inmates LC-21 met were not exactly intimidating — but they were frank with her students. When one inmate was asked why he was there, he said, “Oh, I’m in here because I shot a guy.”
    “The students didn’t know how to react,” said Toth.
    “I don’t really know how I felt about sharing a pallet with someone who had stabbed another person,” one Learning Community member said. “At the time, I did not want to think about it; I just laughed it off, because there was really nothing else I could do.”
    Different groups of LC-21 students made a total of seven trips to the city jail for their mural-painting assignment.
    “The first time we visited Riker’s, I was really freaked out,” one student recalled at the end of the semester. “We could not talk in the halls. We had to walk in a line. They even yelled at an inmate [who was working with us] to put on a jump suit; the guards said that he would walk right out of prison with us if he got the chance. I was really intimidated and felt really uneasy the whole time. I hated my first experience at the prison.
    “I went back two more times, and my experiences were a lot better. I think it was due to the fact that I had already experienced it once, so I knew what to expect. … Going to Riker’s was definitely a positive experience for me. It is something I would never have gotten the opportunity to do. It opened my eyes so much to what it means to be free.”

Other than riding in the van with Professor Toth, wrote Felicia Ruff, what was the most memorable part of mural painting at Riker’s?
    For some students, Professor Toth’s driving was the most memorable part of the Riker’s Island mural project. Toth is known as a brilliant, inspiring art teacher — but she is also notorious for her interesting method of piloting a Wagner van, which provided a welcome distraction for more than one nervous student on her way to Riker’s.
    “The ride was an absolute mess,” a student wrote, “but nonetheless hysterical. In between Professor J not knowing where the Verrazano Bridge was and getting lost in Queens ... I became completely excited about the trip and had no worries anymore.”
    Another “distraction” provided an unexpected bonus for other LC-21 members.
    “My most memorable experience at Riker’s occurred the second time my group went back,” a student wrote. “I wasn’t being particularly productive in the painting department that day, but I found myself engaged in an intense conversation with ‘Leo,’ one of the inmates. It took a while for me to feel comfortable enough to ask him questions, but as soon as he started talking about prison, it was like all the feelings he’d been keeping inside since he had arrived came pouring out.
    “He explained how hard it is for the inmates to watch my Learning Community walk in and out of the prison, because most of them would give anything to have their freedom back. He told me about the fights that go on, the suicides that occur, and the amount of strength it takes him to hold in his tears at night. … I felt I had taken for granted all the privileges I had in my life. I had never needed to resort to stealing because my family didn’t have money to buy food. I was so moved by Leo’s story that I wanted to cry, but I knew it would just upset him.
    “I know that some got more of an artistic experience out of the project than I did,” the student concluded, “but I found a life-changing experience that I wouldn’t trade for the world.”

What do you think you are taking away from your encounter with prison life and culture?
    Several students said their eyes had been opened to social inequities that had not been apparent to them before.
    “I believe that my feelings toward prison life and culture have definitely changed,” one student wrote. “While at the prison, we learned that the men [associated with Horizons Academy] were 18 to 21 years old and were most likely in jail for drugs. A great many of them couldn’t afford lawyers; they could, in fact, be innocent and stuck in jail. I found that very upsetting, because it was such a harsh living environment.”
    “I’m taking away the knowledge of how corrupt and overall messed up the Riker’s prison system is,” wrote another student. “The smallest of crimes to a man with no money puts that person in a group of murderers and thugs. This is simply not right.”

What positive impact do you think you had on the people and culture at Riker’s?
    The Wagner College freshmen had a positive, but not inflated, sense of the impact they and their murals had made on the Riker’s Island environment.
    “Although I wasn’t sure how I felt about the civil-rights-leaders theme of our mural, the end result was quite good, considering that the majority of our Learning Community is theater students lacking in artistic abilities,” wrote one student. “I think the inmates will recognize many of the leaders, and even if they are not inspired by them, it may get them interested or asking questions about them.”
    “I think that our class left a positive impact on the prison, especially the inmates we worked with,” wrote another student. “These men have been in jail for months. … For a person who seems to have so little to live for at the moment, something as simple as a group painting a colorful mural can provide a certain amount of hope — or just make the time go by faster.”

Finally, what was the overall impression that LC-21 members brought away from their experience together on Riker’s Island?

•     “The most memorable part of the mural painting at Riker’s was the finished project. It was such a good feeling to see both murals done, and know that I had contributed. Also, seeing the prisoners help was really exciting, because they were so sweet and they seemed so glad to have us come back each time.”
•     “It was really fun, working with my whole class while applying our new knowledge of color and design to the murals being painted. It was really great to see our ideas up on the wall of the jail — and I remember it being better than I thought it would be.” 
•     “It really helped our entire Learning Community bond together. We had many laughs and jokes with our peers and professors. We learned about what we love, and we helped the community at the same time. I’ll never forget my freshman Learning Community and the fun learning experience I had.”
•     “I loved my Learning Community; I felt that it was the perfect way to start college. … I feel that I have grown as a student and a person in my first semester here at Wagner.”