- One of my students came in one day and opined,"Miss, I think that dude in our class be a killer." When I politely inquired what in the hell was she talking about, she informed me that one of the students in our "How to Butcher the English Language" class was wanted for a local shooting. My student also pointed out, quite helpfully, that even if "he did shoot somebody, that's alright--'cause he's hot." I redirected the conversation, moved on, and googled like a fiend once I was alone--and yep, it was definitely my student wanted in the homicide. Don't worry, though--he eventually turned himself over to the police.
- In a different class at the same CC, I had the students interview each other to prepare for a profile piece. When I asked one student what she had learned from her partner--wait, let me provide a visual. The thing you need to know about this student is that she sports some hella neck tattoos. Specifically, she has a rainbow of "lipstick" kisses wending their way from just below her chin down to god knows where. I always find myself staring at them when she talks. Anyway, Kissy responded, "Well, it's the funniest thing. I'm a felon from upstate New York, and my partner? He's ALSO a felon from upstate New York."
- I had a probation officer contact me, asking me to drop an entirely different student, due to his eminent incarceration. Then, I had an entirely different PO contact me, informing me that So and So had been evicted from his drug halfway house and thus needed to drop as well.
WHAT THE HELL, PEOPLE? Is this normal? We live in a fairly rural area with urban pockets, but I've never experienced such a rash of student bad-asses. It's getting all "Dangerous Minds" up in here, except I'm not taking anyone to a goddamn amusement park.
It's a bad `90s comedy:
ReplyDelete"Jail goes to College!"
"See what happens when a bunch of ex-cons hit the quad at the local community college! It's like 'Animal House' meets 'Scared Straight' and they toke up with 'Half-Baked.'"
More like a National Lampoon '80s project. You could do it now, though: "Oz, the graduate years"
DeleteWelcome, Miss N. Thrope, from a fellow neophyte (great handle!)
ReplyDeleteI had a student allude rather cryptically to jail time once during a project meeting, but as he was pretty quiet in class and had no visible neck tattoos I managed to put it out of my mind. Of course, part of the judicial system in the country where I work includes jail time for non-badassy behavior, so it's hard to say what landed him there.
It makes me wonder why these people are in college. Can't they make a much better living in crime? The pay and the hours are certainly better. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI had an undergraduate criminology professor tell us all that we had made a mistake by enrolling and paying for college. If we had been juvenile offenders, we could have insisted, as part of our "rehabilitation" to be sent to college gratis. Then, after completion, we could have reported that our rehabilitation was not quite complete and earned a Master's degree on the "delinquency scholarship."
ReplyDeleteOf course this was back in the flush with cash 80s.
Not so sure if it is still true.
This was abandoned in the early 1990s. Which is a shame, because felons who get a college degree in prison have a zero percent recidivism rate. Compare that to the national 60% recidivism rate. There was a movie just made about it, called zero percent.
Deletehttp://www.facebook.com/ZeroPercentMovie
So it exists, but only rarely, and not in any form akin to our current college experiences. Also: private funding. So don't encourage 25 year incarceration because it's "such a deal" or anything.
Welcome, Miss N Thrope! It sounds like you and Wombat will have much to talk about.
ReplyDeleteI'm inclined to wonder whether some of the trend you observe is a result of the growth of the prison-industrial complex, which is locking up more and more people to less and less good effect. Really, in some areas (including some rural ones that have tied their fortunes to a prison), it seems like the two main career options open are being a prisoner or being a prison guard (with living on disability or being a health care worker coming close behind. Of course, if you spend your younger days assisting heavy disabled patients with the activities of daily life, for too many hours a day and with no sick leave and poor access to medical care yourself, you may well spend your later days on disability, so the two feed each other). But shootings are hardly the sort of relatively low-level crimes that are filling the prisons (and I realize that drug dealing and even possession, and certainly various forms of non-violent theft, don't seem low-level to the people whose neighborhoods are plagued by them. Still, long-term incarceration doesn't seem like a good solution).
You left that "Crimestoppers" money on the table?
ReplyDeleteAll tips are anonymous and no Caller ID is ever used, you know.
Boy, here at Big Midwestern U we have piles and piles of ex-cons. My favorite of late was the twice convicted pedophile, who, of course, was perfectly innocent of all charges. I've had the cops show up at a class to arrest someone more than once.
ReplyDeleteI noticed that StockStalker made some nasty comments about community colleges and his(?) post has vanished.
ReplyDeleteLooks like SS is being posted off to the gulag under zero-tolerance provisos...
ReplyDeleteThe blog is moderated.
ReplyDeleteSo is SS just our former trolls* under another name?
Delete* I think Tim (not Jim), Anon., and the others are all one person.
honest_prof used a few other names. Tim (Not Jim) did not. There were three people who posted as "anonymous," one, also Terry Franklin, who I've come to know, who's a funny guy, and the other who has been honest_prof and at least 1 other person - all unrelated geographically.
Delete(The Terry Franklin guy, actually posted the first comment ever, and at different times pops up with, "The page is dead." I've learned that he loves the page, doesn't think we're dying, but gets a chuckle out of the joke every time. He, and some others, feel - to me at least - as vitally attached to this page as Cassandra or Stella or Ben or you, but they're not public commenters. They choose, for their own reasons which I wouldn't try to define, to interact with the moderator(s), and I've always enjoyed them.
SS is not, based on my IP work, any of these other folks. I'm torn about him because he often comments in a way that is certainly within what I'm willing to allow on the page as the moderator. He's made some choices in some comments - and I'm not going to go through this in any substantive way - that were clearly out of bounds. And like a dog who gets into the neighbor's garbage occasionally, he's on a bit of a short leash with me.
I welcome his involvement, when it doesn't break the rules of the page.
I have no cons or ex cons where I currently work (that I know of), but when I once worked in a large metropolitan area in the South at a CC, several students readily talked about their criminal pasts (or presents). Some asked me to write a note to their parole officers about attendance and participation in class. One student called me from jail to ask me to call his mom because he knew his mom wouldn't "go upside your head like she would do to me."
ReplyDeleteI'm glad those days are over. They were dear, dear students, but I don't like the responsibility of being someone's 'one phone call.'
Welcome, Miss N. Thrope!
ReplyDeleteYou asked, "Is this normal?" Sounds like just another day at LD3C.
To clarify, that's Large Dead City Community College, my place of employment.
Delete