Learning to Belong with Romarilyn Ralston

Romarilyn Ralston is a nationally recognized leader in supporting students with carceral experience. She is currently the executive director of Project Rebound at California State University Fullerton. It was her work with Project Rebound that was, in many ways a catalyst for what we are trying to do here at Santa Fe. 

Funding for this program was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Full transcripts can be found under each episode at https://freetolearn.buzzsprout.com/. 

Transcript

Jason:

Welcome to Free to Learn, the podcast exploring the stories of formerly incarcerated college students. Romarilyn Ralston is a nationally recognized leader in supporting students with carceral experience. She's currently the executive director of Project Rebound at California State University, Fullerton. It was her work with Project Rebound that was, in many ways, a catalyst for what we're trying to do here at Santa Fe. My name is Jason Frank. I'm an instructional designer at Santa Fe College, and I'm interested in better understanding how we can create a learning environment that better meets the needs of students. A critical step to good design is listening to individuals with experience and expertise, so let's hear what Romarilyn has to say. I wanted to start the podcast with just kind of a general question. What does education mean to you?

Romarilyn:

Wow. That's a pretty important general question to start off with. Well, education, it means really almost everything to me. It's been a way for me to reinvent myself, to transform myself, to help transform others. It's been an avenue to leadership. It's been an avenue to financial stability and success. Education means having opportunities. It means being able to think critically about issues and life, and it also means family. It means networking. It means community.

Jason:

You talk about the transformative power, right? In what ways do you see yourself having been transformed by education?

Romarilyn:

Well, if it wasn't for education, I probably wouldn't be an organizer. I wouldn't be interested in social justice and abolition. I wouldn't be working at a university for sure, and I don't think I would been able to continue with schooling in the way that I have and even be writing my own memoir right now. I think that's what I mean by being transformative. It continues to open doors and opportunities to be better, to do better, to do more, to meet other people and to provide opportunities for others.

Jason:

As you were pursuing your degrees, what were the primary obstacles that you faced as you pursued education?

Romarilyn:

Inside the prison or outside the prison?

Jason:

Well, let's talk about both. Let's start with the obstacles you faced while you were pursuing education within the prison, and then what happened after.

Romarilyn:

Okay. While in the prison, I started college, my first college class in 1990, and it was great. I've always wanted to get a college degree as a kid. I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid. When I took my first college class, I think it was college algebra, and it was hard, but it was fun and exciting because I'd always wanted to be a college kid. I always loved books and even though I was in prison, I had this opportunity and it was fun. I felt alive and inspired every day that I was going to class and just having that experience and that label, a student. Then, semester after semester, different classes and different conversations and different engagement materials and different discourse. Then, the Crime Bill hit in '94 and incarcerated students lost access to Pell Grant funding so we lost our programs. Some of the challenges was that. College programs disappeared across the country, not just in California, but everywhere. Those of us who hadn't earned a degree yet, we were stuck with a handful of credits and really no way of pursuing a degree until these diploma mill schools and correspondence schools started to pop up, and they were really predatory but it was an opportunity for people to finish something that they started.

For me, that was really important for me to finish so I enrolled in a number of schools. I finished a Blackstone Law School, had a paralegal degree. I finished that. Then I went to Newport University and I earned a bachelor's degree in Human Behavior and went on to a master's program through a seminary school, and then through Christian Leadership University earned a doctorate in Christian Philosophy. All this was through correspondence, I didn't know a lot about accreditation. A lot of these schools had international accreditations or belonged to religious societies that didn't require government accreditation, and so there wasn't that education about what these schools and these degrees would mean outside of the prison.

Jason:

Sure.

Romarilyn:

It was accepted and respected by the prison. It was a way for me to continue to learn, which I love to do. But when I came home, it was meaningless, and so I had to start over. When I found myself at the Claremont Colleges auditing a class, not technically auditing a class, but having a friend who was teaching there who allowed me to sit in her class and to have that experience again that I had lost before the '94 Crime Bill, I just fell back in love with school. It was through her encouragement to apply to Pitzer College that I said, "Okay, I'm going to do it again if I get accepted." And I did. I was accepted to Pitzer College, and then I was introduced to social justice. I never thought about social justice when I was incarcerated outside of a sociology class or an ethics class or philosophy class or something like that. I never saw myself wanting to be a part of the movement for social justice because I just wanted to run away from my experience as an incarcerated person, as being someone with a criminal history.

I just wanted to go underground and put it all behind me. But it was through the experience that I had as an undergrad student at Pitzer through a program called Borrowed Voices that went into the youth facility [inaudible 00:07:48] and I was teaching a class there with incarcerated youth, and we were writing poetry and interrogating hip-hop music and really critically looking at those lyrics to see how they influenced our lives, the lives of others, and how we were engaging with that music and fantasizing about a life like that, knowing that it wasn't really real, but somehow internalizing it anyway.

Jason:

Sure.

Romarilyn:

One day, I went into the juvenile facility and they just looked like my kids, and I thought there's something wrong here. From that point on, I just started to really get involved in social justice. I started reading more about abolition and more about restorative justice practices. One thing led to another, and all of a sudden, I was in grad school in St. Louis in 2014 about to start WashU and Michael Brown was killed, and I just happened to live in North County, St. Louis. My niece lived in Ferguson, and I got involved. I went down to the quick trip and it was ground zero, and I started meeting with people and just listening to what folks were talking about and marching in the streets and I found myself engaging in that movement for Black lives, and it just changed everything for me.

Washington University had a number of conversations. The Black Student Union was involved. I spoke about it when I gave the convocation speech and just one thing just led to another. I was part of the Coro Fellows Program at the time, and one of our executives was part of the Ferguson Commission, and we were asked to volunteer for a number of things. I volunteered, and the more I got involved in the social movement of what was happening in Ferguson, the more I realized that I needed to be involved because of my lived experience with incarceration, because of me being a Black American in America. Education did that. It helped me to figure out how I wanted to give back to my community, to the world, but also how I wanted to fight, and it taught me how to fight.

Jason:

It almost seems like while you were in prison, education was a way to kind of escape. And then after prison, education became a way to-

Romarilyn:

Engage.

Jason:

Engage.

Romarilyn:

Yeah.

Jason:

Right? To be more present, and that's an amazing story. Were there particular classes or instructors or mentors that you think were key on this journey for you?

Romarilyn:

Oh, definitely. One of my favorite at Pitzer as an undergrad was Maria Soldatenko. She taught Chicana studies class, but she talked about social movements in a way that was really powerful and engaging for me. I could see the revolutionary, radical energy of the Chicana studies movement for ethnic studies, and she talked about being involved in that movement as a student at Cal State LA, and then I had a couple of classes around prison education. I thought I'm going to take a prison education class and Dr. Sojourner introduced me to Dylan Rodriguez and Ruthie Gilmore, and he actually took us to meet Ruthie Gilmore when she visited Pomona College and reading Golden Gulag blew my mind. Blew my mind. I had no idea of the economy that prisons create and how it stimulates, and just the prison industrial complex, how this whole web of corporations and government and education and systems connect. These kind of classes really helped me to think bigger and broader about how I became incarcerated, what my labor meant to the State of California, what my body meant to the State of California and others.

It was really eye-opening, and still, when I think about it, even right now, I'm just baffled by how diabolical some of these systems really are and if it wasn't for people like Angela Davis and Ruthie Gilmore and Dylan Rodriguez and others talking about these systems of oppression that primarily target poor, marginalized communities where many of us are Black and Brown people that end up being enslaved by our own governments and also abandoned by them at the same time. It just really, I think, provoked me in a way while I was in Ferguson to say now that I know better, I need to do something about it and I just can't have this knowledge and this information and not push back in some kind of way. That pushing back could be protesting something that harms another community member, like Darren Wilson, when he killed Michael Brown. It could be creating some type of afterschool program. It could be teaching incarcerated youth. It could be working at Project Rebound. It could be a lot of things, but I think we need to each one teach one, so that we're all in a position to know more about how these systems work so that we can have more control of our own freedom and liberation.

Jason:

What do you see as the main challenges for drawing attention to these systems helping people to see them?

Romarilyn:

One of the main problems is we're distracted by too many things. Social media, relationships, money, substance abuse. I mean, just wanting to fit in and belong. There's so many distractions in the world where people are not really reading and talking and communicating with one another anymore, where everyone's a sound bite and there's so many podcasts and so many sites to be on, and everyone's liking something. No one wants to thumbs down anything. It's so much pressure now. We're just not talking to one another like we used to. I'm a baby boomer, and it took me a long time because I've only been out of prison 12 years, and it took me a long time to text. I used to tell people, "Don't text me. Call me. I want to hear your voice. I want to talk to you. I'd rather spend five minutes talking to you than 15 text messages." And they wore me down. Now I find myself sending text messages and isolating myself and just everything is just 40 characters, a hundred characters, and that's not what life is supposed to be about.

Jason:

Well, and one of the interesting things with social media is this idea that because I liked a post or I made a short little TikTok video, I've done something, and you create this illusion of activism that I think can undermine the real work of it and finding that balance. It is about connection. What kind of student would you describe yourself as?

Romarilyn:

Well, inside the prison, I was pretty assertive. I was almost aggressive and very competitive in the classroom. We all had to be the best. Everyone wanted to be an A student. We were all A students, but we still had to be ranked and I wanted to be number one. Very competitive for a very long time. Then when I was an undergrad at Pitzer College, which was totally different because everyone there was so brilliant, these kids were smart and had all the advantages of AP and honors courses and high school trips and they were just so well-traveled and well-spoken, spoke multiple languages and here I was, a 50-year-old Black woman who had spent two and a half decades in prison and hadn't had that kind of foundation so I felt out of place and I kind of retreated within myself until one day, a professor friend told me that I had something that these kids didn't have and that was experience and multiple experience.

I had been in the military, I had been in prison. I was 50 years old. I had experienced a lot of life and that I had a way of reading the material that people who hadn't lived as long as I had or experienced the things that I had, could do. I could bring all of that into the classroom, and I didn't know that I could bring all of that into the classroom. When I was told I could, I did. I started to engage with the material and with the students from my own epistemology, from my own experiences. Not only did it open up more discussion in the classroom, but it allowed me to be a student and also somewhat of a teacher.

Jason:

Sure.

Romarilyn:

That helped to put me back into what I used to feel like as a student inside, competitive and wanting to contribute to the class and be number one, of course. Then, grad school was a little different because it was a bunch of older students now, and we were all experienced and they were professionals and now I was intimidated by a lot of these profession folks who were starting second and third careers now.

Jason:

Sure.

Romarilyn:

It was WashU, so I was like, oh my God, this is my dream school so I was feeling that all over again, the imposter syndrome that so many us feel. But somehow I got through it and I wasn't trying to be number one. I wasn't trying to compete. I had gotten to a place in my life where I was starting to believe that I was good enough and I didn't have to do extra, to be more, to prove myself. I just wanted to enjoy the experience, and so that was really nice, getting to that point and that's why I'm done. I'm done with it.

Jason:

That idea of, again, coming back to systems, like the higher education system, and you can very easily get caught up in the grades and the GPA and the rankings and lose sight of that transformation, and it just becomes about checking boxes. That's a huge step, I think, for any student to be able to step back and say the A matters less than the change. When you came back to school, how forthcoming were you about your carceral experience with other students and faculty?

Romarilyn:

With faculty, I was wide open. With the students, I was afraid. I thought that these kids would call their parents, and I really thought this, that they would call their parents and say, "Guess who's in my class? This woman who spent two and a half decades in prison," and whatever they would say. They would start to google and do all these things and the parents would call the school and insist that I'd be expelled or removed. That was the fear I had, all of the shame and stigma of incarceration, and I just felt like that's why the imposter syndrome was so powerful in my life. I thought one day, I would walk onto campus and there would be a line of parents with tiki torches, and I would feel like Frankenstein and they'd be running me out of town. That was the fear I had.

Jason:

Wow.

Romarilyn:

It never happened.

Jason:

Did you overcome that fear while you were still in school or was it more of in retrospect?

Romarilyn:

I didn't overcome it until probably my senior year, and I was one semester away from graduating. At that point, no one had run me out of town. People knew who I was, and they were so gracious and so supportive. I couldn't believe it. I would tell some of the students, "Look, you know I've been in prison and I just came home six months ago or last year, and I don't know what social media is. I don't know how to get here. I don't know how to use this. What is that?" They would just sit with me and show me how to use different software and access different sites on the internet. And, "Oh, Ro, you don't have to do that. You can just go to this site and it'll do all that for you, and it'll create your bibliography and it'll create your this, and it'll spell check that."

I was like, what? Because I was suffering. I was up all night. I didn't know these tricks and these tools were available. I didn't have the social capital. The coming out really gave me access to people who had that social capital and they were willing to teach me. I just had to be willing to be open. Once I was, my life changed. I actually started to enjoy classes and started to not be so intimidated by technology and the internet. Things became a lot easier for me. I was up writing things with pencil and paper every night and using dictionary, books, hard copies, paper, and all this stuff was online. I didn't have a clue. No one was telling me that.

Jason:

And they didn't know they needed to tell you.

Romarilyn:

And they didn't know they needed to tell me because people didn't know who I was so I had to be vulnerable. I had to be brave, I had to be courageous. It was through that vulnerability, that courage that people said, "Okay, I can help you do that. I can help you do this." That's when my life started to change. You have to have the courage to ask for help in order to be helped. Simple as that.

Jason:

I remember reading something by Brene Brown. She talked about the difference between fitting in and belonging. When you're fitting in, you're trying to figure out what are the behaviors? What are the skills? And you don't go, you don't ask. But to belong is to say, "Here I am, and I want to be here, and this is who I am." I hadn't really thought until I was listening to you speak that when you're willing to show up, it's that vulnerability, but you're also inviting people to help in a way that they can't if you don't show up.

Romarilyn:

Because we're all bringing the representative. We're not bringing our authentic selves. We show up, we're suited, we're booted, we're not talking to people. We act like we have it all together, but we're a hot mess. It's not until you say, "I'm a hot mess. Help me. I'm not eating. I'm not sleeping. I don't know what I'm doing," that you're able to get the support that you need. It wasn't until I was able to tell people, "Look, I just got out of prison after two and a half decades. I don't know what this is. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know." Really, I didn't know. I wasn't being lazy. I wasn't trying to avoid doing my share or my part. I wasn't using it as an excuse. I honestly did not know. I had never seen or heard of these things. People receive that, and it changed the game for me. Any students out there that think they have to hide in the shadows, stay in the darkness because of shame, embarrassment or fear, we've all been through something. We all have things that we're ashamed of and embarrassed about, and there are people out here that are willing and ready to help you if you come out of that darkness and step forward into the light.

Jason:

When you're working with students that are coming out of prison and trying to make that transition into college, what do you prioritize in terms of the guidance and the advice and the things that they should do?

Romarilyn:

Community. That's my first priority. They've already proven that they deserve to be on campus. They received the admissions letter. I tell them that you've already proven that you can do this work. You're here, so let's just take that off the table. Let's get you to a place where you feel supported, like you have a community that you belong here. That's what we need to work on so that when you are on this campus, you know where you're going, you know people, people know you, you feel safe, you have your basic needs met. You have your textbook, you have parking if you need parking, transportation, you have food, you have all of the things that you need to be successful. You have housing, you have employment. Those are the things we worry about, not the other way around.

Jason:

What are the obstacles to finding that community and feeling part of that community for these students?

Romarilyn:

People have to believe it and accept the help. It takes a while, because it took a while for me. I didn't believe I deserved to be there, and it took a professor to tell me just what I just said. You don't have to keep trying to prove that you belong here. You're here, which means you belong here, because the acceptance rate was 9%. When he said that, it made perfect sense. It's like not everyone gets in, but you did, so let's take that off the table and how can we get you to get the most of this experience? Because it is a privilege to be here.

Education is a privilege, and when you get it, you use it to benefit others, to benefit society. That just helped to shift something within my whole being about being a student, being on campus and belonging. Every time I would walk campus and I'd see a freshman over in the corner crying on the phone to their parent, oh, I loved it because I knew six months from now, you wouldn't be crying anymore. You would have planted your flag on campus and you would have taken ownership of what this is all about, but it takes time for people to get there. They have to buy into it, and they have to believe it and there has to be people willing to be there for them. You can't do it by yourself. As long as we are hiding in the dark and being ashamed and not coming forward, we won't build community. That's not how you build community.

Jason:

What I heard earlier was that formal education, you're done. Or is that? Did I did mishear anything?

Romarilyn:

Well, you never say never.

Jason:

You never say never, but there are no intentions.

Romarilyn:

There's no intentions.

Jason:

No intentions on another degree going forward at this point.

Romarilyn:

Not one that I have to pay for.

Jason:

Okay. Fair enough. What are your goals? What are you looking forward to accomplishing?

Romarilyn:

Well, I'm writing a memoir and I hope to finish that by the end of the year, early spring next year. After that, I've wanted to run for office. That's still kind of on my list of things to do, but slowly moving to the bottom of the list now so there's a couple of things, but I always like to keep my options open because I don't know everything and opportunities come our way, and I want to be open to those opportunities. It has served me well so far. It's served me in the prison to be open and flexible. It has served me well since I've been home, to walk through doors that other people have opened for me and we'll see.

Jason:

If you were to give advice, not to students, but to instructors who wanted to support students who had carceral experience, what would you tell them?

Romarilyn:

I guess, two things. All students are different. Once you find out a student has gone to jail of prison, don't think differently of them. It's an experience. Support the student just like you would support anyone else. Listen to them. Ask them what their needs are and help to provide those needs. Then secondly, challenge the student to come forward, be more open, invite them to participate in class more, to be visible so that they can be seen because that's really how we come into our own being, knowing that we are accepted.

Jason:

Is there anything else you would like to talk about in the few minutes that we have remaining?

Romarilyn:

I identify as a Black feminist abolitionist. I think we need to talk about mass incarceration in the prison system. We need to take a real hard look at how our state governments invest in corrections and really divest from education. We need to fix that and correct that. We need to make sure that our most vulnerable in our societies who are suffering from mental illness and homelessness and lack of quality housing and education and employment, that we use the resources to make sure that our communities are safe and healthy. That's where we should be putting our tax dollars. All taxpayers out there need to make sure that their elected officials are doing that work for their community. There's too much homelessness, there's too much substance abuse, there's too much violence, which means that we're not investing in the type of resources that bring about wellbeing and health and life-affirming opportunities for individuals.

Something's wrong with how we are allowing our governments to govern so we have to hold them accountable to what's happening in our communities today and demand that they do better by us. Then, we as community members need to hold each other accountable, and we need to stop turning our heads and looking away when there's problems in our communities and start being real neighbors, being neighborly, saying hello to each other, and knowing the names of the people who live on our blocks and helping one another. We have to get back to being kind and being concerned.

Jason:

Well, thank you so much. This has just been a wonderful conversation and I know it's going to make a difference.

Romarilyn:

Thank you.

Jason:

Thank you.

I want to thank Romarilyn for coming in to talk with us, and I want to thank her for the work that she's doing. Funding for this program was provided through a grant from Florida Humanities with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the Florida Humanities or the National Endowment for the Humanities. This episode was produced by [Ann Tibo 00:37:28] and Lex Shelton. Thank you for listening.