Andrew Skotnicki & E3MC: An Educational Incarceration Intervention
By Deirdre Heavey, May 2021
Carceral Learning
Listening to conversations about criminal justice reform through my Airpods from my overpriced dorm room as I indulge in a snack of my choosing, I peer through the mini camera in the center of my MacBook Air. Staring back at me are the Brady Bunch squares filled with the predominantly white faces of my classmates in our weekly Google Meet. Dr. Andrew Skotnicki, noted by the yellow light around his square, records the meeting from his small office on campus at Manhattan College; behind his head lies an overloaded bookshelf with bibles, books, portfolios and papers, that of which live the resumes, business cards, class readings and certificates of completions symbolic of nine years as the professor of a college course taught with incarcerated individuals within the walls of Rikers Island.
With the transition to virtual learning came a peering into one another’s lives. No longer did students occupy a singular and routine space where inequalities were diluted at the door. Students now log onto their Zoom or Google Meet classes from the comfort–or discomfort–of their own homes, positioned on display for all of their classmates to see. Within the virtual classroom of Dr. Skotnicki’s Criminal Justice Ethics course at Manhattan College, 13 students log on from the desks of their dorm rooms on campus, the kitchen tables in their suburban family homes and often their childhood beds. Yet, the students on Rikers Island who have defined Skotnicki’s classroom ethos for the past nine years do not make their way into the Brady Bunch squares. The digital divide between the incarcerated students and the on-campus students of the Criminal Justice Ethics course is just the latest inequality on display within the carceral system.
Skotnicki: The Spirit Guide
The Engaging, Empowering, and Educating Meaningful Change (E3MC) Program was created by Andrew Skotnicki, PhD at Manhattan College in Spring 2012. Since its inception, over 70 formerly incarcerated students have completed a course on Rikers Island–or through the sister program added at Westchester County Jail–and subsequently attended and graduated from Manhattan College. Skotnicki drew his inspiration from Lori Pompa’s Inside-Out Program at Temple University in Philadelphia, P.A. In 1997, Pompa began teaching the “Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program: Exploring Issues of Crime and Justice behind the Walls” course at Graterford Prison. Just like the E3MC Program, Inside-Out was a class of incarcerated and non-incarcerated individuals within the prison walls. Skotnicki took the program one step further with guaranteed acceptance letters and tuition coverage at Manhattan College to formerly incarcerated students who pass the Criminal Justice Ethics course.
There is nothing particularly extraordinary about Andrew Skotnicki. Sure, he evokes the same grandfather of activism aura to that of Bernie Sanders as well as the similar contagious ethos of Fr. Greg Boyle, but simply put: he is an ordinary man with an unshakable commitment to criminal justice reform. When he came to Manhattan College, it was never a question of whether he would establish a connection with Rikers Island, but in what capacity. Skotnicki spent about a year coordinating the details of E3MC on the College’s front. Meanwhile, he was working every angle–from writing letters to administrators and cold-calling colleagues of colleagues–for approval from the Rikers Island administration. Then, one day, in the most serendipitous way, Skotnicki was approved to jumpstart E3MC; in what he regards as an “illumination from the divine.”
“I ran into a guy who had just been hired at Manhattan College,” Skotnicki said over Google Meet. “I asked him if he was married, and he said yes. [His wife] had just taken the job as the Assistant Commissioner of Educational Programs at Rikers Island. One simple conversation welcoming him to Manhattan College and there you go… After a year and a half of calling people and writing letters to get this program started, a week later I had coffee with his wife. 6 weeks later, and I was taking students to Rikers Island. That was in the spring, April 2012. We are celebrating nine years next month.”
We often make blanket statements like “everything happens for a reason” as a way to see the glass half full, taking our short falls and turning them into something positive. Yet, we marinate in the obsolete ideal that our current state of misery will one day all be worth it. Within this cliché toxic positivity that packages itself as false-hope, there are those rare instances, the once-in-a-lifetime individuals, who come along and change everything. Andrew Skotnicki is the line between the half-empty and the half-full glass; he is the reckoning, the illumination, the grace, that comes into your life and puts a wrench in all of your plans. Skotnicki grants individuals the unique opportunity to say, “This is the moment when everything changes.”
Katherine Thornton was an English major when she started taking Criminal Justice Ethics, a sociology major when she completed it. By the end of that academic year, she had transferred to John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Joseph Liggio, inspired by the gang graffiti he found engraved on his desk on Rikers Island, dedicated his capstone project at Manhattan College to decoding gang graffiti through New York City and arguing its status as a legitimate form of communication. Elizabeth Stenson, the E3MC Coordinator of Manhattan College, took the course in 2017 and has been “forever changed” after undergoing a 180 on her career path. Rosalia Chefalu learned the value of empathy when she took Skotnicki’s course in fall 2020, choosing to forgive those who have done wrong by her. “Andrew Skotnicki changed my life,” said Darby Zelaskowski plain and simple, true in every aspect of the phrase. These are just a few of the stories from “outside” students who have paved new paths, strengthened their perspectives or discovered a new life’s mission through Skotnicki’s guidance.
A Push for Carceral Education
The value of the Criminal Justice Ethics course is a direct result of the vulnerability of the “inside” students. One incarcerated sister in particular, Tanika, shared her story with the Criminal Justice Ethics class about how she was arrested without her Miranda rights. As Tanika and her daughter were getting ready for their first day of school from their public housing unit in Manhattan, officers appeared at their door and took Tanika to the police station for her apparent failure to appear in court. While the officers assured her that she’d be back in time for school that morning, she ended up spending hours at the court until learning she was awaiting a murder trial. Since then, she has been on Rikers Island–without bail as a “flight risk” because she has only lived in New York City for two years–awaiting her trial to prove her innocence.
Tanika had one incentive on the morning of January 27, 2020: to attend her first day of school. Despite the injustice in her arrest, derivative of a system in which “guilty until proven innocent” has become a mantra to the incarcerated women in the Criminal Justice Ethics Course, Tanika was finally able to participate in a college course because of E3MC. While this program does not erase her injustice or recreate her first days of class, it returns Tanika’s opportunity to continue on the trajectory of the life she left behind when she was locked behind bars.
Tanika and her fellow Jasper sisters have demonstrated their uncanny ability to grasp the issues of hyperincarceration, the history of the carceral system and identify the metaphors of our literature. Time and time again, the incarcerated women have left us outside students dumbfounded by their commitment to their education–the passion of which is lost on a group of privileged students at a private institution. Tanika is just one story in the sea of incarcerated folks who have been subjected to the broken system, whether profiled or impoverished or lacking the resources to prevent incarceration.
Many of the incarcerated individuals on Rikers Island were never given the opportunity to earn a college degree. The criminal justice system disproportionately targets Black low-income communities; these communities simultaneously lack the money and resources to pursue higher education. Police brutality, the surveillance of Black bodies and the reality of hyperincarceration have been topics of discourse in popular media since the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. With this racial reckoning, we read novels like How to be AntiRacist, sign petitions for accountability in the murder of Breonna Taylor and recognize that justice in the Derek Chauvin trial would equate George Floyd alive, and breathing, today. Despite our collective awakening, the solution to systemic racism is roadblocked. Between bipartisan debates between blue lives matter and defunding the police, we’re talking about the issues without the ability to implement tangible solutions.
For the past nine years, Andrew Skotnicki’s Criminal Justice Ethics course has intervened. He’s bypassed the roadblocks to which maintain hyperincarceration by establishing the safe space within the classroom to develop kinship. Outside students learn empathy and forgiveness as they reimagine a world where the “criminals” they have been conditioned to fear in their privileged lives become their classmates. Simultaneously, inside students earn the irreplaceable opportunity to attend college and pursue higher education–challenging the broken system that has maintained their fragmentation.
The Divide
The reciprocal communication between outside students and inside students on Rikers Island are what propels the experience beyond that of the rudimentary college course. However, as the great equalizer of the classroom disintegrated with the emergence of virtual learning, the incarcerated folks on Rikers Island were exempt from class discussions, deprived of the ability to ask Skotnicki questions or experience the traditional college course experience they were promised.
The experience of incarcerated individuals in quarantine did not scratch the surface of exposure of the Black Lives Matter movement. Visitations were banned to prevent the spread of COVID-19, trial dates were pushed back for public health consideration, Jasper sisters reported increased mental health issues and mainstream media hinted at COVID-19 outbreaks without accessible in-depth analysis. Meanwhile, Fox News and other right-wing media sources spotlighted BLM protests with rhetoric of violence, riots and destruction. Even left-leaning sources, like CNN or MSNBC, opted to stream 24-hour on-scene video footage of violence in the streets of major U.S. cities. To what end?
As opportunist politicians made grand speeches about police reform and the likes of Chris Cuomo and Tucker Carlson engaged in nightly digs to one another, the incarcerated individuals of Rikers Island remained in their cells–the embodiment of a gridlocked system. Just as the pandemic has disproportionately impacted our society’s most disenfranchised communities, those incarcerated have been pushed farther into the corners of representation and reform.
Yet, Skotnicki perseveres. More than 70 formerly incarcerated students have graduated from Manhattan College through the E3MC Program, each with the unique opportunity to reclaim their lives. Meanwhile, Skotnicki faces a number of health issues of his own, inevitably slowing down his once-unscathed energy. Skotnicki has worked tirelessly with the officials on Rikers Island to obtain the technology and means to carry out a virtual course with the incarcerated women. He even obtained a $50,000 pledge from Aramark Corporation to support E3MC and provide employment opportunities for formerly incarcerated students at Manhattan College, minimizing the employment barrier that has caused several formerly incarcerated students to drop out of Manhattan College.
Andrew Skotnicki sees himself as a simple man, and maybe he is, but his humility has worked its way into the lives of those he has taught–both on Rikers Island and at Manhattan College. As we emerge from the pandemic with a newfound sense of activism for police reform and racial justice, let’s not forget where we’re holding those who have fallen victim to the system stacked up against them. The E3MC Program has changed lives. Perhaps, we can reinvest our political debates into efforts to create more interventional educational opportunities.
