We are sending this letter to you to announce a new educational program available to prisoners. We are excited to tell you about the formation of University BARS (Boston Activists for Revolutionary Schooling), a program offering classes to prisoners, created by the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) and Life After Framingham.

As educational programs and other services to prisoners have been cut in recent years, the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) and the mass organization it leads, RAIL, have been in the forefront of the movement fighting for prisoners rights and offering independent access to educational materials through our Books for Prisoners program. Life After Framingham was formed by and for the current and former prisoners of MCI-Framingham to serve the needs of women prisoners at Framingham both while they are behind bars and upon release. LAF publicly advocates for women in prison to the state legislature, other advocacy groups and the general public. We are working together to offer men and women prisoners in Massachusetts (and soon in other states as well) greater access to educational programs.

University BARS has the long term goal of offering college credit to prisoners. But as a first step in offering greater access to education behind the bars, we are offering correspondence courses. Starting in January of 2000 there will be a limited course offering as we try out our first semester of classes for prisoners. We invite you to sign up for these classes.

How the classes will work:

Each class will be offered over a 12-week semester. You will be sent readings and assignments in a packet once every two weeks. You must complete the assignment and send it back to us in order to receive the packet for the next two weeks. All correspondence for the courses will be conducted through the RAIL post office box (RAIL, PO Box 559, Cambridge, MA 02140).

Getting help with assignments: You are welcome to write to the instructor as often as you like and you are encouraged to also seek help with your class from other inmates. You might be able to get help from your prison librarian as well. But we do have to alert you that legally DOC employees can not officially help you with your assignments. Of course we don't support this policy, but you should be aware of this when asking for help (this includes people teaching classes behind the bars).

The Cost: We do not currently have any funding for this program although we are in the process of seeking funds. We will work with the instructors to cover the costs of the photocopying of course materials. It will cost you roughly two stamps for every 2 week period to send back in your assignments. If you expect to have a problem with this, let us know. We may be able to help out by providing stamped envelopes for your use. We also ask that you send us stamps to help cover our mailing costs. For every student we ask for 8 stamps for a class. If you can not send this many, whatever you can send will help. This will not cover all of our mailing costs but it will help out.

Please type: We do ask that you try to type your assignments. If this is not possible (for instance, if you are in the hole) that is ok, just write as neatly as possible.

Possible problems: There are a number of roadblocks we expect from the prison administrators to try to stop us from providing these educational programs. The first possible problem is censorship. Once you have received confirmation from us that you are enrolled in a class you should expect to receive packets every two weeks (if you complete and return your assignments). You should let us know if you do not receive these packets. You should also expect to receive your assignments back with comments from the instructor, if you do not receive these back you should check to make sure we received your mail. We also expect prisons to try to tell us these classes are unauthorized. We do not believe there is any legal basis for this as a reason to stop us from offering the classes and we will fight this in court if necessary but we will need your help in alerting us to any problems you experience. There will be no exams so no prison proctors will be needed (this is another possible complaint your prison might have about the program.)

In Struggle,

RAIL/Life After Framingham

BACK