Over the past few months, the Prison University Project hosted a number of extracurricular events for students to connect and engage with outside guests.
- On December 27, we celebrated students’ creative expression and talent with our annual Open Mic event. Students shared poetry, dance, short stories, stand up comedy, and music.
- On January 16, students and outside guests discussed Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, a magical realist take on slavery and the Underground Railroad, as part of a series of book discussions the Prison University Project hosts to facilitate connections between students in the College Program and free people.
- On February 14, a team of students from the College Program at San Quentin faced off against a team from UC Santa Cruz in our third annual Ethics Bowl competition. Over the course of two rounds, both teams applied principles from moral philosophy to the issues of student loan forgiveness and reproduction in the era of climate change.
- On February 21, author Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) visited San Quentin for a short reading, question and answer session, and discussion based on his bestselling novel Adverbs. Students appreciated the opportunity to learn about Daniel’s inspiration for the book, his writing process, and his advice for pursuing the creative arts.
Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.