prison

America is a violent, petty nation. The people of this country call for humane justice from the highest hills, but “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is the way this nation handles its own failures. I’ve said much in the past about the hypocrisies of the current movement to abolish prisons. Until we clearly define exactly what true justice looks like for every group of people, we will continue to see people protest against systemic oppression in the form of incarceration for some people and justify state violence incarceration as a system of punishment. America’s go-to response, prison, is a violent monster without taste buds but with an inexhaustible appetite. The immediate emotional response when a person breaks the law is to seek out punitive responses to deter their behavior rather than invest resources and time into addressing the root causes of the issues that led to the crime. Moving toward and creating a more harm-reductive criminal legal system means that we must define accountability outside of the context of punishment. We live in a nation where the line between accountability and punishment is not clear, and because there is no distinction, the two concepts become one in their application.

Your point of view on society’s race issue can dictate the harm of your privilege. In this nation, attempts of self-representation by Black people are met with counter-narratives that silence or smother their testimonies.

Public health experts have projected that the growth rate of COVID-19 cases in jails and prisons would surpass that of New York City, which has the highest number of cases nationwide. While Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced efforts last month to reduce the prison population, activists call on the courts, correction commissioners, and mayors to intervene in a crisis that is acting faster than officials.

On November 20, Rodney Reed, an African-American man, will be executed by the state of Texas. He was wrongfully accused of raping and murdering a white woman and tried by an all-white jury. He has been on death row for 21 years, which corresponds to the lifetime of a graduating college student. Numerous pieces of evidence point to his innocence, including witness testimonies and forensic evidence. However, the state of Texas will neither accept those new pieces of evidence, nor will it test the murder weapon for DNA. As Columbia students, we believe we have a duty to act and support the Reed Justice Initiative.

This summer, a couple of campus publications brought to light a contract that Columbia recently signed with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. For a tidy sum of $150,000, the University’s National Center for Disaster Preparednesswill develop “medical protocols for assessing individuals trying to cross our Southern border.” From all appearances, these protocols will mainly be deployed at the short-term federal detention camps and processing centers near the border itself. However, the contract raises much broader questions about medical ethics and the University's increasingly cozy relationship with Border Patrol.

Every semester or every year, the tide of campus activism seems to shift away from one cause and toward another. Is this a natural way for activism on campuses to evolve? Does this undermine the efforts of past Columbians? Most importantly, is there a better way for activists to make lasting differences on campus?

When Columbia's financial investments in the private prison industry (worth over $10 million, according to data from December 2013) came to the attention of a group of students, we wrote an open letter to University President Lee Bollinger voicing how disturbed we were that our university was literally profiting off of people being locked up. Our letter, delivered on Feb. 3, 2014, called on Columbia to divest from the industry and requested that our president confirm a time for us to meet with him about the issue.

Student and faculty activists have spent time and energy advocating for Columbia to cut financial ties with companies involved with private prisons or the the fossil fuel industry.