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UNC’s Friday Center offers inmates classes

Raphael Ginsberg is the typical UNC graduate student, teaching his way through school. Except he teaches prisoners.

Ginsberg has worked with prisoners for about five years, but never during that time has he feared for his safety.

“These guys have so much to lose by messing with me that it was never a possibility,” he said.

Ginsberg is involved with the Correctional Education Program offered through UNC’s Friday Center. The program was started in 1974.

The program offers free educational opportunities to minimum-security inmates across the state in various correction facilities.

“They go from regular prisoner to actual student, and it’s empowering,” Ginsberg said.

This semester, UNC instructors are teaching 10 courses at six different prisons across the state, said Brick Oettinger, UNC’s associate director for correctional education.

Oettinger said UNC was the first institution to offer classes, but more N.C. universities have become involved with prison education.

“We’ve made it more of a consortium within the university system,” he said.

But the program isn’t for everyone — students must have a GED score of at least 250 and a qualified reading level or prior college academic credits.

The program excludes all class A and B felons — the most offensive classifications — and people whose parole eligibility date is more than 10 years away.

Prisoners in the program can either take in-person classes in prison or participate in a self-paced course by mail.

Oettinger said on-site programs are popular with the inmates, but the program couldn’t enroll as many students this year because of a cut in federal contributions.

“It’s not a reflection of the demand by any means, but simply of budget,” he said.

Oettinger said the classes are paid for by the state’s existing Inmate Welfare Fund, which he said does not receive taxpayer money.

Jean DeSaix, a UNC biology lecturer, has been overseeing a self-paced biology course since the 1970s.

She said inmates have a workbook filled with assignments that they send back to her periodically for grading.

DeSaix said she encounters starkly different viewpoints from UNC students while working with the inmates.

“It really has given me insight into the range of understandings and perspectives of people,” she said.

Ginsberg said the program helps inmates find their potential, adding that when one of his former students was released from prison, he attended community college.

“It wouldn’t have been a reality or a possibility for him,” he said.

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Contact the desk editor at university@dailytarheel.com.

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