Below is a small excerpt from The Hechinger Report’s ‘From Prison to Dean’s List: How Danielle Metz got an education after incarceration.’<\/em><\/p>\n “…Metz gave away most of the possessions she\u2019d acquired in prison. She let other women have the white jeans and colorful sweat suits she\u2019d brought before the prison changed its rules, outlawing civilian clothing. She left behind her eyeglasses and all of her hair accessories, but she kept the journal. Its opening pages were proof, she thought, of what she\u2019d accomplished inside. The back half remained empty, space left to document the life Metz had thought she\u2019d never get to live.<\/p>\n Metz lived in a halfway house when she first returned to New Orleans. Catholic Charities hired her for an AmeriCorps job packing food boxes for low-income senior citizens, and she was grateful for the work. She\u2019d earned only 29 cents an hour cooking meals in the prison cafeteria. The AmeriCorps job gave her a stipend and a $2,200 scholarship to put toward her education. But Metz spent months unsure if she\u2019d be able to use the scholarship.<\/p>\n She knew a few people who\u2019d gone to college after prison. Her older brother had even earned his master\u2019s degree in criminal justice after he finished his 13-year sentence, but he\u2019d always been the smartest of the nine kids. Metz worried she didn\u2019t have the same special aptitude.<\/p>\n One of the activists who\u2019d helped Metz fight for clemency, Syrita Steib-Martin, had also attended the University of New Orleans after serving nearly a decade in prison, but she had initially been denied entry to the college because of her criminal record. Steib-Martin got in the second time she applied because she left blank the spot on the application that asked about convictions. Steib-Martin went on to her earn her bachelor\u2019s in clinical laboratory science, became a supervisor at a local hospital and ran a nonprofit helping formerly incarcerated women. But Metz didn\u2019t want to lie on an application.<\/p>\n Then, in March 2017, a man named Hakim Kashif visited the halfway house. He told Metz and the other women living there that he\u2019d been released from prison half a decade earlier and was now close to earning his bachelor\u2019s from Southern University in New Orleans. Metz didn\u2019t know Kashif well, but she knew police had indicted him on drug charges in 1993, the same year she\u2019d gone to trial.<\/p>\n Kashif showed Metz his school ID and a schedule of his classes. He carried his report card everywhere he went. He\u2019d finished six semesters with nearly all A\u2019s and B\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cYou think you can get me into SUNO?\u201d Metz asked him.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, girl,\u201d Kashif said. \u201cCome on. I\u2019m going to bring you down there.\u201d<\/p>\n Kashif was self-motivated \u2014 he\u2019d never doubted that he could and should earn his degree after he got out \u2014 but he knew most people needed more than encouragement once they left prison. He drove Metz the 10 minutes to SUNO that day and walked her to the admissions office. Kashif held the door open, and Metz stepped inside, staring at the building\u2019s beige brick walls in wonder. She\u2019d never been inside a university before…”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n