Brown and White Vol. 128 no. 20

              The Brown and White
Vol. 128 No. 20
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
‘All the Lehigh News First’
From the panel discussion on race with Sybrina Fulton—the mother of Trayvon Martin— this fall, to the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration keynote speaker Michelle Alexander in January, the Lehigh community has been engaging in discussions about injustice.
The Prison Project is one of the avenues for students and facul­ty to experience firsthand some of the issues that these talks addressed.
The Prison Project allows 23 students and two faculty mem­bers from Lehigh to visit the Northampton County Prison in Easton each week this semes­ter. While there, stu­dents and faculty tutor individual inmates, many of whom are study­ing for their General Educational Development tests.
Lloyd Steffen, a professor of
Chabad at Lehigh was estab­lished in 2008 with the dream of creating a “home away from home” for the Lehigh Jewish community.
Since then, it has seen growth that cannot be contained in its current 2,500-square-foot town­house on Evans Street.
A new house is being built in order to provide the much-needed space to accommodate and expand Chabad’s growing programs and events.
“At our first few events, we had between two and 10 students,” said Rabbi Zalman Greenberg, the director of Chabad at Lehigh, in an email. “Fast forward to 2014. On Rosh Hashanah, we hosted over 200 students in our backyard, and on Feb. 20 we hosted ‘Shabbat 250’ at the Comfort Suites Hotel, where over 250 students and faculty from the Lehigh commu­nity participated in the largest Shabbat dinner in Lehigh history. In short, we are bursting at the seams.”
The new house, called the Joachim Schaufeld Center for Jewish Life, will be located near campus at 306 Wyandotte St.
It is an 1866 historic mansion that once served as a Lehigh fra­ternity house. Over time, it was neglected and when Chabad took ownership, it was in need of ren­ovations.
Greenberg said the construction is in its final stages and is expect­ed to conclude sometime in June.
The 10,000-square-foot home will include a student lounge, large dining room for 200, state-of-the-art kosher kitchen, syna­gogue, Judaic loaning library, ter­race and guest suites with park­ing.
The Chabad House will also serve as the Rabbi’s family resi­dence.
The synagogue in the new Chabad house will be the only one in South Bethlehem, according to Jackie Grant, ’15.
“Although we hold weekly and holiday services in our current location, having a Synagogue will be very exciting and will encour­age more students to attend ser­vices,” Grant said in an email.
Several members of Chabad have watched it grow exponen­tially over the years and go from a handful of students at dinner to not having enough room for every­one attending to sit.
“I am very excited about the new house and what it will do for the Jewish community at Lehigh in the years to come,” Michael Lefkoe, ’15, said in an email. “Chabad has been a key part of my time at Lehigh. As a senior, I have witnessed the Jewish communi­ty become much more active and vibrant over the past few years, and Chabad has no doubt helped fuel this positive change.”
religion studies and the univer­sity chaplain, helped start the Prison Project in 2008 as part his course “Practical Justice,” which he was teaching at the time.
In the course, students integrat­ed knowledge of three different social concerns — medical care, public education and America’s prison system — through on-site service learning opportunities, one of which was tutoring inmates at the Northampton County Prison.
“When the course was over we had this great relationship with the prison, so we just decided to keep this thing going,” Steffen said.
The Prison Project is a progressive step toward a rehabilitative prison system instead of a purely punitive one.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections’ offi­cial website, as of March 2015, there were 53,560 people incar­cerated in the state.
These inmates are housed in state correctional institutions, community correction centers, community contract facilities, fed­eral prisons and county prisons—such as Northampton County Prison.
Unlike state correctional insti­tutions, county prisons are not regulated by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. Instead, the Office of County Inspections and Services inspects each county prison separate­ly.
Out of the 26 state correc­tional institutions in Pennsylvania, 18 were over capacity as of March 2015.
Mary Foltz, an assistant pro­fessor of English, participated in the Prison Project during the Fall 2012 semester.
“Although the state does have funding and wonderful staff mem­bers, they don’t have the resourc­es to tutor each inmate who is interested individually’” she said. “That is really what Lloyd creat­ed— a project that addresses a need.”
Molly Fitzwilliam, ’16, said one rewarding part of the Prison Project was being able to see the inmates make real progress toward their GEDs.
Tutors are, as frequently as pos­sible, kept with the same inmate from week to week so that they can develop a rela­tionship with each other.However, because most inmates at Northampton County Prison have short-term sentences, and because working with a tutor is voluntary, some Lehigh volun­teers frequently work with differ­ent inmates.
Deena Davis, a professor of bio­ethics, said participating in the project was challenging because she is used to preparing for her classes in advance.
With the Prison Project, she said she never knew what materi­al they would cover on any given day.
Even if she could not perfectly explain the GED material, which was recently made much more challenging, Davis said she still
Prison Project provides tutors for inmates
Megan Burke/B&W Staff
The new Chabad house is located on Wyandotte street and is currently under construction. The front doors of the house were preserved from the original house.
Chabad set to move into new, larger house
Since Chabad joined the Lehigh community in 2008, its numbers have grown. In June, construction will be completed on a new build­ing for Chabad to accom­modate the community.
By ZARA RUSTOMJI
B&W Staff
See PRISON Page 4
See CHABAD Page 3
Dollars spent on Pennsylvania
prisons in 2013-14
53,560
$1.9M
Number of
incarcerated inmates in Pennsylvania
Lefkoe also said, like a hermit crab that has outgrown its shell, Chabad at Lehigh has outgrown its current house, and it is time to
By KAREN KONKOLY
B&W Staff
New location to accommodate growing numbers