Justice symposium begins

The upcoming spring symposium entitled “Communities and Justice: Inequality and Innovation in America’s Justice System” will feature a variety of speakers addressing the problems in the justice system. The symposium begins on Sunday, Feb. 27 and will continue through March 4.

Organizers hope that the event will open discussion.

“We’re hoping to talk directly about something that a lot of people have never really though about or directly deal with in their lives,” said Hanna Mahon ’13, one of the student organizers for the event. “So many of these people were in prisons, whether working or being in there all of the time, and that’s a perspective that we don’t really talk about here. It isn’t obvious.”

The symposium opens Sunday with Paul Butler, a professor of law at George Washington University, who will give the keynote address entitled “A Hip Hop Theory: Race and the American Justice System.” He will speak about the relationship between hip-hop music and the high incarceration rate in black communities. The lecture will be followed by a performance by RIDDIM, the student hip-hop dance group.

The following two days focus on the structure of the American prison system. Robin Steinberg, founder and executive director of the Bronx Defenders, will speak Monday about holistic community building and the importance of a public defense system.

The Prajna Meditation Club is sponsoring a screening of The Dhamma Brothers that evening, which is a documentary about the Donaldson Correctional Facility in Alabama and a meditation program that was instated there.

On March 1, John Perry, who served for 30 years as the director of the Vermont Department of Planning, and Juliana Ratner, program director of the Free Minds Book Club and Writing Workshop, a nonprofit which aims to introduce literature and creative writing to young inmates in Washington, D.C., will give a talk entitled “Structure and Reform in the US Prison System.” They will focus on different ways to structure the prison system to maintain efficiency, while still providing inmates basic rights and opportunities to reform.

Later that evening, the Women’s and Gender Studies Program will sponsor a screening of What I Want My Words to Do to You, a film about a writing workshop for women in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York.

Wednesday will be focused on immigration policy, with particular attention to migrant workers in Vermont. There will be a panel composed of Rebecca Turner, a public defender for the appellate courts of Vermont, Michelle Jenness, who works with the Vermont Immigration and Asylum Advocates, and Lise Nelson, professor of geography at the University of Oregon. The panel will focus on how the justice system treats migrant workers.

“We tried to put together people with different interests so we could talk about a broad range of things,” said Hannah Postel ’13, another student organizer.

Eddie Ellis, a former prison inmate, will speak on March 3 about his experience in the judicial system. He will also attend that evening’s Verbal Onslaught event and speak again about his experiences in a more informal setting.

The week’s events will close on March 4 with a panel of Middlebury students and faculty who have done either work or research relating to the justice system, including Professor of Anthropology David Stoll, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology Rebecca Tiger, Raymond Queliz ’11, Viveka Ray-Mazumder ’11 and Nora Hirozawa ’11.

“This topic in general isn’t hugely brought up on campus, so we were actually pleasantly surprised to find that a lot of people had done research on it or had worked in the realm in the summer,” said Postel. The panel will also discuss how others can get involved in justice issues if they find they are interested at the end of the week.

The symposium has been covered in regional newspapers and advertised at the University of Vermont in hopes of attracting people from outside the Middlebury community. Many professors have also printed the symposium on their spring syllabi, which the organizers hope will encourage students to come to the events.

“We wanted to work with existing groups at the school … because we have all these different resources and you can see that all these different departments and groups are pretty excited and are sponsoring us,” said Mahon.

Communities and Justice: Inequality and Innovation in America's Justice System