Thursday, September 30, 2010
Greetings from Vermont
Sunday, September 26, 2010
MacCormick Prison
One of the most interesting experiences in my time at Cornell was making repeat visits to the MacCormick Secure Center. For five years, Sam Nelson has been visiting the prison on a weekly basis to take a debating class and he helped arrange to take us along to his classes.
The experience highlighted the twin extremes of American society. Cornell, whose endowment dwarfs the GDP of some nations, is an institution embodying the wealth and excellence of America’s higher education system. MacCormick stands apart as a small but resonant emblem of America’s enormous prison industry.
In a small rural hamlet north of Ithaca, MacCormick is a high-security juvenile detention facility housing youth who have committed serious violent crimes. The facility is about half an hour from Ithaca and is relatively isolated, situated in a clearing at the end of a scenic long, winding road littered with scrap metal. The children it houses mostly come from New York City and other distant population centres such as Buffalo. The remote location can make it difficult for the offenders to receive visitors. I noticed signing into the prison when I returned on Monday that relatively few visitors had visited since my own visit on the Friday before. I think it is safe to assume that if people are not visiting on the weekend then they are not really visiting the residents.
The inmates are almost exclusively African-American and Latino. Although the facility houses inmates up to the age of 21 (they can transfer to adult prisons at age 18 if they wish), they are mostly 15 or 16 year old boys. Approximately one third of the inmates are fathers. There are around 40-50 inmates, housed in three separate units of around 15. There is very little interaction between the units, who eat, sleep and go to school together.
MacCormick is undoubtedly at the less repressive end of the American carceral spectrum. Yet there are some constant physical reminders that you are in a prison. Movement within the prison relies on hand-held radio requests to a central facility to open any doors. The sound of the heavy metal doors being remotely unlocked was somewhat haunting. Whatever vista the windows in the classrooms looked out onto featured the enormous metal fence in the background. Plainly the New York juvenile corrections department has adopted “matte Spartan” as its interior design aesthetic: the walls were unadorned by posters or pictures, the colour scheme was uniformly dull.
On each occasion at McCormick, our work took on a similar form. For about an hour, we sat and talked to three or four of the students and then, split up into teams comprising one student and one adult each, we undertook a debate. The first session involved a debate on the motion “that we should close all zoos”. Few of the students had been to a zoo but, as a few awkward moments revealed, they could all understand the experience of lacking certain liberties. The second session featured a debate on the topic “that all athletes who cheat through drugs or break the law should be banned from sport and removed from the record books”. Like many other students around the world, their initial reticence to speak disappeared once the debates were under way.
In some small way, the promotion of debating at McCormick visibly alleviates the boredom and inertia of juvenile prison. It cannot redeem the mistakes and disadvantages that have led these young men to McCormick but it can give them some sense of the importance of argument and the value of public speaking as a means of self-expression.
-cc
The experience highlighted the twin extremes of American society. Cornell, whose endowment dwarfs the GDP of some nations, is an institution embodying the wealth and excellence of America’s higher education system. MacCormick stands apart as a small but resonant emblem of America’s enormous prison industry.
In a small rural hamlet north of Ithaca, MacCormick is a high-security juvenile detention facility housing youth who have committed serious violent crimes. The facility is about half an hour from Ithaca and is relatively isolated, situated in a clearing at the end of a scenic long, winding road littered with scrap metal. The children it houses mostly come from New York City and other distant population centres such as Buffalo. The remote location can make it difficult for the offenders to receive visitors. I noticed signing into the prison when I returned on Monday that relatively few visitors had visited since my own visit on the Friday before. I think it is safe to assume that if people are not visiting on the weekend then they are not really visiting the residents.
The inmates are almost exclusively African-American and Latino. Although the facility houses inmates up to the age of 21 (they can transfer to adult prisons at age 18 if they wish), they are mostly 15 or 16 year old boys. Approximately one third of the inmates are fathers. There are around 40-50 inmates, housed in three separate units of around 15. There is very little interaction between the units, who eat, sleep and go to school together.
MacCormick is undoubtedly at the less repressive end of the American carceral spectrum. Yet there are some constant physical reminders that you are in a prison. Movement within the prison relies on hand-held radio requests to a central facility to open any doors. The sound of the heavy metal doors being remotely unlocked was somewhat haunting. Whatever vista the windows in the classrooms looked out onto featured the enormous metal fence in the background. Plainly the New York juvenile corrections department has adopted “matte Spartan” as its interior design aesthetic: the walls were unadorned by posters or pictures, the colour scheme was uniformly dull.
On each occasion at McCormick, our work took on a similar form. For about an hour, we sat and talked to three or four of the students and then, split up into teams comprising one student and one adult each, we undertook a debate. The first session involved a debate on the motion “that we should close all zoos”. Few of the students had been to a zoo but, as a few awkward moments revealed, they could all understand the experience of lacking certain liberties. The second session featured a debate on the topic “that all athletes who cheat through drugs or break the law should be banned from sport and removed from the record books”. Like many other students around the world, their initial reticence to speak disappeared once the debates were under way.
In some small way, the promotion of debating at McCormick visibly alleviates the boredom and inertia of juvenile prison. It cannot redeem the mistakes and disadvantages that have led these young men to McCormick but it can give them some sense of the importance of argument and the value of public speaking as a means of self-expression.
-cc
Week One
The tour commenced on Thursday the 16th of September when I arrived in Cornell. Fortunately some British debating friends (involved in the debate program at Cornell) were also visiting. After sampling some local delicacies at Wings Over Ithaca (namely about 1000 different types of Chicken wings), we attended a meeting of the Cornell Forensics Society (the debating society), after which I judged a practice debate.
Friday saw us visit the MacCormick Secure Centre – a juvenile detention facility (see separate blog post). After lunch we left with the Cornell teams for the Binghamton IV, the first big debate tournament for the academic year.
The Binghamton tournament was actually two tournaments: a policy debate tournament and a British Parliamentary (“Worlds”) format tournament. Policy debating is a unique American phenomenon that involves a more evidence-based approach to debating. The debaters debate the same topic over the entire academic year (this year the topic is about expanding visa access for immigrants) and accumulate vast amounts of evidence that they store in “tubs” which they transport to tournaments and take into debates. Most of my knowledge of American policy debating has been from video clips such as this http://www.slate.com/id/2264222/entry/2264221 or exchanges such as this. I found the brief bit of policy debating I saw at Binghamton to be quite impressive, especially in the cross-examination section.
My involvement at Binghamton was as a judge of the Worlds format tournament. Worlds-format debating has only recently arrived on the American college circuit and a group of universities in the North-East are encouraging its spread. There were six full-length preliminary rounds followed by Quarter Finals, Semi Finals and a Grand Final packed into two days. I’m not sure if any Australian tournaments have ever tried to pack five full-length debates into a day but apparently this is a regular occurrence in America. Perhaps teams were able to gain the necessary stamina from the large piles of (admittedly delicious) raw sweet corn that were being consumed at the tournament. The Grand Final that I judged was an excellent debate on mandating single-sex education at high-school level that was ultimately won by a team from the University of Vermont over a Cornell team. Fortunately, the Cornell club bore no ill will and still gave the judging panel a lift back to Ithaca at the conclusion of the tournament.
From Monday to Thursday, I was based at Cornell where I helped in the running of some debating workshops, made a repeat visit to the MacCormick prison and undertook some debates against the Cornell teams. The British Debate team are also touring America at the moment and by a rare bit of scheduling serendipity were also in Ithaca at the same time. We combined our efforts under the seamless direction of our host, Sam Nelson, the Director of Forensics at Cornell. There was, of course, a healthy dose of tourism and an unhealthy dose of gastronomic excess.
Cornell is an incredible mix of natural and architectural beauty. The university sits majestically atop a hill overlooking a heavily forested valley and winding river. Bridges connect various parts of the campus across the famous Ithaca gorges (as the t-shirt states: “Ithaca is Gorges”). After a spate of suicides last year, large fences were erected on most of the bridges – an action that has proved controversial (and led to “Ithaca is Fences” stickers being plastered everywhere). Cornell’s facilities are world-class and it has mercifully been spared the concrete brutalism that most other universities around the world feature. Apparently when Cornell was founded by Ezra Cornell and Andrew D. White, they brought over entire villages of Greek and Italian stonemasons to construct buildings to the appropriate architectural standards. Even one of the few modernist buildings (the Johnson Art Gallery – whose top floor panorama is the finest in Ithaca) is an elegant I.M Pei creation.
Debate is an official subject at Cornell and on Wednesday we debated “That Cornell should end formal support for fraternities and sororities” in front of the class. Cornell boasts the largest “Greek system” of any of the Ivy League universities and one of the biggest in the nation, offering over 39 different fraternities and sororities for students to join. Sadly my impassioned plea for support for fraternities as a means of subverting oppressive drinking laws fell on deaf ears when the class came to judge the debate. Later that day I was the guest judge at a public debate between the Cornell teams and the British team on the motion “That Britain was no longer relevant”. Without in anyway prejudging the outcome of this year’s Ashes series, the essential truth of the British team’s characterisation of their homeland as facing an inexorable political, cultural and economic decline won the day.
Our host at Cornell (and the organiser of our tour), Sam Nelson, was a model of American generosity and American hospitality. As a local apple farmer, second-hand bookstore owner and Cornell faculty member, Sam was the perfect guide for exploring the surrounding Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. The resplendent fall colouring of the trees made for some impressive scenes, especially at Taughannock Falls.
Curiously, on our drives around the area, you couldn’t miss that it is election season. The New York party primaries were held in mid-September and signs promoting various candidates for municipal, state and federal elections were everywhere. Unlike Australian elections, very few of the posters featured the faces of the relevant candidate. Perhaps this more modest form of propaganda is why (unlike in Australia) so many people are prepared to plant a yard sign clearly identifying with one particular candidate?
-cc
Friday saw us visit the MacCormick Secure Centre – a juvenile detention facility (see separate blog post). After lunch we left with the Cornell teams for the Binghamton IV, the first big debate tournament for the academic year.
The Binghamton tournament was actually two tournaments: a policy debate tournament and a British Parliamentary (“Worlds”) format tournament. Policy debating is a unique American phenomenon that involves a more evidence-based approach to debating. The debaters debate the same topic over the entire academic year (this year the topic is about expanding visa access for immigrants) and accumulate vast amounts of evidence that they store in “tubs” which they transport to tournaments and take into debates. Most of my knowledge of American policy debating has been from video clips such as this http://www.slate.com/id/2264222/entry/2264221 or exchanges such as this. I found the brief bit of policy debating I saw at Binghamton to be quite impressive, especially in the cross-examination section.
My involvement at Binghamton was as a judge of the Worlds format tournament. Worlds-format debating has only recently arrived on the American college circuit and a group of universities in the North-East are encouraging its spread. There were six full-length preliminary rounds followed by Quarter Finals, Semi Finals and a Grand Final packed into two days. I’m not sure if any Australian tournaments have ever tried to pack five full-length debates into a day but apparently this is a regular occurrence in America. Perhaps teams were able to gain the necessary stamina from the large piles of (admittedly delicious) raw sweet corn that were being consumed at the tournament. The Grand Final that I judged was an excellent debate on mandating single-sex education at high-school level that was ultimately won by a team from the University of Vermont over a Cornell team. Fortunately, the Cornell club bore no ill will and still gave the judging panel a lift back to Ithaca at the conclusion of the tournament.
From Monday to Thursday, I was based at Cornell where I helped in the running of some debating workshops, made a repeat visit to the MacCormick prison and undertook some debates against the Cornell teams. The British Debate team are also touring America at the moment and by a rare bit of scheduling serendipity were also in Ithaca at the same time. We combined our efforts under the seamless direction of our host, Sam Nelson, the Director of Forensics at Cornell. There was, of course, a healthy dose of tourism and an unhealthy dose of gastronomic excess.
Cornell is an incredible mix of natural and architectural beauty. The university sits majestically atop a hill overlooking a heavily forested valley and winding river. Bridges connect various parts of the campus across the famous Ithaca gorges (as the t-shirt states: “Ithaca is Gorges”). After a spate of suicides last year, large fences were erected on most of the bridges – an action that has proved controversial (and led to “Ithaca is Fences” stickers being plastered everywhere). Cornell’s facilities are world-class and it has mercifully been spared the concrete brutalism that most other universities around the world feature. Apparently when Cornell was founded by Ezra Cornell and Andrew D. White, they brought over entire villages of Greek and Italian stonemasons to construct buildings to the appropriate architectural standards. Even one of the few modernist buildings (the Johnson Art Gallery – whose top floor panorama is the finest in Ithaca) is an elegant I.M Pei creation.
Debate is an official subject at Cornell and on Wednesday we debated “That Cornell should end formal support for fraternities and sororities” in front of the class. Cornell boasts the largest “Greek system” of any of the Ivy League universities and one of the biggest in the nation, offering over 39 different fraternities and sororities for students to join. Sadly my impassioned plea for support for fraternities as a means of subverting oppressive drinking laws fell on deaf ears when the class came to judge the debate. Later that day I was the guest judge at a public debate between the Cornell teams and the British team on the motion “That Britain was no longer relevant”. Without in anyway prejudging the outcome of this year’s Ashes series, the essential truth of the British team’s characterisation of their homeland as facing an inexorable political, cultural and economic decline won the day.
Our host at Cornell (and the organiser of our tour), Sam Nelson, was a model of American generosity and American hospitality. As a local apple farmer, second-hand bookstore owner and Cornell faculty member, Sam was the perfect guide for exploring the surrounding Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. The resplendent fall colouring of the trees made for some impressive scenes, especially at Taughannock Falls.
Curiously, on our drives around the area, you couldn’t miss that it is election season. The New York party primaries were held in mid-September and signs promoting various candidates for municipal, state and federal elections were everywhere. Unlike Australian elections, very few of the posters featured the faces of the relevant candidate. Perhaps this more modest form of propaganda is why (unlike in Australia) so many people are prepared to plant a yard sign clearly identifying with one particular candidate?
-cc
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