Throughout Lucas Whaley’s 25 years in prison, his academic pursuits became a vital part of his identity and routine.
Whaley took classes through the Cornell Prison Education Program for 13 years until his release, graduating with 247 credits, an Associate of Arts degree from the State University of New York Cayuga Community College and a Certificate in the Liberal Arts from Cornell. Whaley now collaborates with CPEP and has given talks at Cornell about his experience.
CPEP was founded in 2010, based on a 2008 program called Cornell at Auburn. CPEP offers courses each semester, run by University faculty and graduate students assisted by undergraduate teaching assistants.
Today, CPEP offers two academic programs — a Certificate in Liberal Arts from Cornell University and an Associate in Arts degree from SUNY Cayuga Community College.
Whaley said he “just squeaked through” the entrance exam to CPEP and described his early experience in the program as feeling “wildly out of place.”
“At first, [taking classes] was a break from the monotony,” Whaley said. “It was the one thing that I was doing with my life that was indisputably positive.”
Prof. Joseph Margulies ’82, government, is the faculty director of the Cornell University Parole Initiative. He was also one of Whaley’s professors at the Cayuga Correctional Facility.
“Formal education in prison has the potential to be transformative for people inside because it helps solidify their reconception of themselves into students and thinkers,” Margulies said. “It helps them reimagine the world that is possible for them.”
CPEP Communications Director Jenna LaPietra described the possibilities that the program offers beyond incarceration.
“In prison, a college program also represents a link to the outside world, the potential to be seen as more than a person with a criminal conviction and an opportunity to imagine another chapter for one's life, beyond the confines of prison walls,” LaPietra wrote in an email to The Sun.
Whaley said that for most of his life, college felt out of reach. School seemed far removed from the person that he was and the environment that he lived in. It was not until an acquaintance at the Auburn Correctional Facility urged him to sign up for the CPEP entrance exam that Whaley began to consider an academic trajectory.
He joined the second cohort of CPEP, which consisted of about 12 men from the prison. About nine of the students had been sentenced to life without parole and Whaley said they were a “quieter, calmer sort of prisoner” than he was used to. He attended classes at night in a school building within the prison.
For Whaley, the competitive, “hyper-masculine” culture in prison gave academic success a new weight. Competition in the cohort motivated him to be successful. Whaley explained that to have someone tell him he was incapable of academic success was different than self-reinforcing the idea.
“It made me not want to fail,” Whaley said. “It made me consider what failure would mean in new ways.”
For many people in prison, their family or society has been telling them that they are not capable of success, Whaley explained. “So, when you get a break, it really just seems like people are again saying you're not really capable. And when people don’t give you a break, it’s kind of like you have to succeed,” he said.
The importance of education in Whaley’s life in prison never waned. He said that if he had to miss a class — because of a lockdown or the officers not opening his gate — it disrupted the flow of his life. When two courses he wanted to take overlapped in timing, he would sign up for one and get the books and materials for the other, writing and turning in essays for the second class on his own time.
Throughout his time at Auburn, Whaley took courses ranging from applied physics to gender and politics in the U.S. He described the latter class as a major turning point in his perspective — a “paradigm shift.” Throughout Whaley’s time in the program, writing was a subject he returned to.
“I’ve had different interests in my writing,” Whaley said. “But I think story is the one thing that I always return to. Story is the thing that continues to fascinate me.”
Emma Cohen ’28 is a Sun contributor and can be reached at erc228@cornell.edu.
Correction, February 11, 10:45 a.m.: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Prof. Joseph Margulies ’82, government, as the faculty director of the Cornell Prison Education Program. He is actually the faculty director of the Cornell University Parole Initiative.
