February 28th, 2020, Oberlin College and Spring Arbor University participants of the “Bridging the Gap” Winter Term project met in front of the state Capitol in Lansing, MI before they met with elected officials to discuss prison reform. Progressive philanthropist Simon Greer led the group, teaching the students dialogue techniques like active listening and storytelling skills.
Oberlin College second-year Maleek Cusack felt that the lack of disagreement between the groups weakened the intent of Greer’s dialogue exercises. Third-year Spring Arbor student Elizabeth Stewart reminisced on the friendships she cultivated with the Oberlin students during the program. Both Stewart and Alexis Lewis, a third-year student at Spring Arbor, said that their centrist group was not representative of the overall conservative beliefs of their student body. Both Lewis and Oberlin College second-year Darielle Kennedy have family members who are currently or formerly incarcerated. Kennedy said that this experience gave her valuable insight into the lives of correctional officers, and the project as a whole changed her life by giving her a voice in prison reform.
However, once at the correctional facility, students were confronted with racist and homophobic beliefs. In one instance, a white student from Spring Arbor, who joined the project late, quoted a false statistic that Black Americans are 13 percent of the US population but commit 50 percent of violent crime. This statement was alarming for both the Spring Arbor and Oberlin students, especially because the student is part of the school’s campus safety.
“Somebody took him to the side and they told him that [the statistic is wrong], and they also told him the things that you say can get people hurt,” Kennedy said. “It gets people killed because not only do you believe stuff like that, but there are real police officers who feel the same way.”
Though this student’s comment sparked a long conversation, Kennedy believes that the student didn’t learn anything from the experience, and the student emailed his campus safety boss to defend himself.
In another situation at the correctional facility, a correctional officer said that he didn’t believe that same-sex couples make good parents. The chaplain of Spring Arbor also said that sex between two people of the same gender is sinful when he talked to the “Bridging the Gap” participants, a view reiterated in the 2019-2020 Spring Arbor Community Guidelines.
“How do you give validity to a view like that?” questioned Cusack. “Simon [said] you don’t have to move to listen to and respect someone else’s beliefs. And I was like, ‘No, if I’m respecting this belief, I do have to compromise something within myself.’”
College third-year Austin Ward said that it is more difficult to find common ground when it comes to explicit attacks on your identity.
“I think [in cases of] people saying racist things, people saying homophobic things, really insulting things to people’s identity and character — I don’t know if the gap can be so easily bridged,” Ward said.
Whether or not the “gap” was “bridged” between the two student groups depends on whom you ask. In April 2020, the Spring Arbor students came to Oberlin for a reunion. Greer hoped to expand this program to eight other college campuses in 2021 and many more in 2022 and into the 2023 future.
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