“Please Read”: Correspondence on Race in the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic
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Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic bifurcated and disrupted the 2019 and 2020 academic years. Moving forward it seems clear that we will delineate our time in terms of “before the pandemic” and “after the pandemic.” This distinction resonates with faculty and alumni of the University of Iowa’s (UI) Liberal Arts Beyond Bars (LABB) college in prison program for reasons beyond the COVID-19 virus. On March 9, 2020, the Iowa Department of Corrections suspended all in-person volunteer activity and family visits for people incarcerated in the state of Iowa. Additionally, in May of 2020 new leadership was installed at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center (IMCC) prison. Under the prior warden the UI LABB program had access to a computer lab where students could log on to the browser-based University of Iowa Learning Management System (called ICON — Iowa Classes On-Line) and interact with their coursework, faculty, and LABB staff. This system of communication kept us connected, even when we could not be in the same physical space. This personal narrative exchange arises from themes mined from that specific correspondence between the authors from March 10, 2020, the first day after all visitors and volunteers were locked out due to COVID protocols, and August 18, 2020, when the college program’s computer lab was dismantled, and communication severed. Themes within this correspondence speak to the difficulties of communicating from a prison, especially during a global pandemic, as well as to the ways racism manifests in higher education in prison programs. Additional discussions about the challenges of maintaining mental health under the care of prison health providers and during the exacerbation of isolation and tension unique to quarantine are also presented [TRIGGER WARNING – this article contains references to suicide, trauma, and other issues of mental health and wellness.]
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