June 12, 2012By Dave Tobin, Syracuse.com -
On graduation day at Auburn’s prison, the ovation for Doris Buffett exploded.
Student inmates cheered and applauded. One boomed, “Thank YOU!”
Buffett, their white-haired, 84-year-old benefactor, smiled from the podium. Around the auditorium’s perimeter, corrections officers watched sullenly.
It had been 17 years since inmates at the Auburn Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison, could earn a college degree.
Through her money and advocacy, Buffett, the sister of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, had made it possible again. Fifteen men graduated last week with associate’s degrees from Cayuga Community College, through a program taught by students and staff of Cornell University.
At Auburn and Cayuga Correctional Facility in Moravia, where the Cornell Prison Education Program educates 95 inmates, Buffett has spent $650,000 since 2008 to pay for books, teachers and administrative costs. She’s paid to provide college law courses to prison staff.
She bought $10,000 worth of yarn for a Vietnam veterans prisoner group that crochets scarves and hats for needy children.
Buffett, of Fredricksburg, Va., has visited inmate students at Auburn four times — once for a classical piano concert she paid for and organized, which involved bringing a grand piano into the prison.
Across the nation, she has spent $6.6 million funding similar education programs at 20 prisons, nearly $2 million of that in New York prisons.
“I am not a New Ager, nor am I religious,” she said last week, as she recalled her first prison graduation, at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in 2005. “But when you see a guy standing up and holding his diploma and he says, ‘Mom, I never did anything to make you proud of me. This one’s for you,’ it’s a knockout punch. There’s real redemption.”
Her efforts have helped renew the discussion of the benefits of prison college programs for inmates, their families, the prisons and society. Last month, the Ford Foundation agreed to work with Buffett’s foundation to expand higher education in New Jersey prisons.
“Now I might sound like some old lady who’s dreamy, but I’ve seen different recidivism figures, and they run between 35 and 63 percent for the whole country. That means they’re back in the system in three years and start the cycle all over again.”
That cycle is expensive. The cost in New York is $62,000 per inmate per year.
State corrections Commissioner Brian Fischer and Auburn Superintendent Harold Graham say the inmates taking classes behave better, and those who earn college degrees in prison are less likely to return to prison. They’d like to see college education offered throughout the system, even if taxpayers support it.
“Idle minds can lead to trouble,” Graham said. “The offenders in this program are people who don’t get in trouble. They have a perk they don’t want to lose. And once they’re out, there’s almost a 100 percent chance they will not re-offend.”
Retail philanthropy
Buffett started her Sunshine Lady Foundation in 1996, after inheriting millions of dollars of stock in Berkshire Hathaway, her brother’s legendary company.
She’s given away more than $100 million, according to the foundation. Much of it is in small grants of a few thousand dollars to individuals who, through no fault of their own, need help — battered women, sick children or at-risk youth. She often makes personal phone calls to those needing help or visits programs she has helped.
“My brother (Warren Buffet) does wholesale philanthropy,” she said, referring to the $31 billion pledge he made to the Gates Foundation in 2006. “I do retail philanthropy.”
Doing retail philanthropy means she wants to know the details. She knows, for instance that at Sing Sing, where her funding has helped 88 students graduate with college degrees, none have returned to prison. The day after Auburn’s graduation, she and her assistant, Mitty Beal, drove to Sing Sing to attend a graduation there.
Her involvement strengthened the Auburn program.
In 1995, Cornell English professor Pete Wetherbee began volunteering at Auburn on his own, not as part of a university program. Syracuse University had been offering degree programs at the prison, paid for by state and federal grants. In the mid-1990s, an anti-crime campaign killed the grants, and the SU program ended.
Wetherbee kept teaching, helping prisoners with correspondence courses and offering one non-credit class each term. He brought in Cornell and Ithaca College colleagues to teach. In 1999, he asked Cornell to sponsor free credits and transcripts, which the university did. But no degree.
In 2007, Cornell government professor Mary Katzenstein, who also taught at the prison, asked the Sunshine Lady Foundation for help. Buffett insisted that Cornell find a way to award degrees. It did that by offering SUNY associate’s degrees through Cayuga Community College. Buffett also insisted that teachers “be interesting.”
So courses are taught by Cornell doctoral students or second-year students from the schools of law and business, by postdoctoral fellows and tenured faculty. Only graduate students are paid. Others volunteer. Roughly 80 faculty and teaching assistants enter the prison each week to teach.
An exclusive group
This past year, the courses included genetics, biology, constitutional law, international human rights, anthropology of Japan, representation in hip-hop and political thought, Shakespeare, economics, medical anthropology, theater, and pirates and state power. A year ago for an ecology course, students planted a garden — five raised beds just around the corner from the weight yard where inmates pump iron.
And the program emphasizes writing.
“In here, writing is our No. 1 form of communication with people in the outside world,” said Jacob Russell, 35, who graduated last week and spoke on behalf of students.
An exclusive group
This past year, the courses included genetics, biology, constitutional law, international human rights, anthropology of Japan, representation in hip-hop and political thought, Shakespeare, economics, medical anthropology, theater, and pirates and state power. A year ago for an ecology course, students planted a garden — five raised beds just around the corner from the weight yard where inmates pump iron.
And the program emphasizes writing.
“In here, writing is our No. 1 form of communication with people in the outside world,” said Jacob Russell, 35, who graduated last week and spoke on behalf of students.
Etheriage Pierce, , 38, is one of the graduates. He is serving a life sentence for multiple counts of second-degree murder. Pierce was 19 when he killed three people in Rochester days after killing five others, including his grandparents, in Queens, according to published reports.
“People have put themselves in my way both physically and mentally to derail me,” he said, referring to guards and other inmates. “I’ve been in prison for a while. They know my past. They figure that person is just underneath the surface and can be brought out by the slightest provocation. So it was important to me to prove them wrong.”
In her authorized biography “Giving it all Away,” Doris Buffett talks about her bouts of depression, her four “horrific” marriages and divorces, and her abusive mother.
A book that helped her, she said, was “Man’s Search for Meaning,” by Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who spent three years in Nazi death camps. Frankl writes that we can’t avoid suffering, but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose.
Buffett gives the book to inmates in all her prison programs.
“I think everyone ought to read Viktor Frankl at least twice, certainly people who are incarcerated. It’s perfect for them,” she said.
Christopher Shapard, 38, another graduate, is serving a life sentence for robbery, kidnapping and burglary. Shapard said Frankl’s book made the difference for him.
“When I first started the college program, I listened to all the people who said, ‘What’s a degree for you? You’re a lifer,’” Shapard said.
“I really had to do some soul-searching to decide whether or not I was going to stay committed to the program. Once I made that commitment — it was really after I got a book from Doris Buffett — I sat down and put this education in context. I’m starting to help other people with it.
“Even if I don’t get out to use it, I think I’m a better person and I’m better equipped to help other people, possibly get them out and keep them out. The biggest thing that brings people back to prison is lack of options and the lack of understanding that they have options. A lot of people just don’t know that they’re worth it.”
For Buffett, her campaign of giving has brought her great joy. Her brother, Warren, told her their father would be more proud of her than of him, she said, her eyes tearing.
“I wish other people who have money would catch on,” she said. “They just don’t get it. You have a joyful life when you do this. If you’re dead, nothing! So why not do it right now?”
