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Without this one mans dream none of us would be here we wouldn't be in these classes we
wouldn't be aspiring to do these great things we wouldn't be achieving these accomplishments
and receiving these accolades without the one mans dream in action so I want to with
everything that is in me thank Professor Roden
Mountainview Program has changed my life in so many ways so its provided me with opportunities
opportunities for education but also opportunities to meet people opportunities for networking
and just an opportunity to better myself people always told me I had potential and I did believe
it but I didn't know how to apply it and Mountainview just allowed me the opportunity to really
show my best side and move forward with my life
I did a whole year at Essex County College when I was in the halfway house before I came here I never was in a class bigger then like
twenty students and I came here I took a hundred level communications class and when I walked
into that lecture hall I thought I was going to faint I saw like four hundred kids and
I don't know it was just like a really big culture shock and like that's the first thing
I remember about Rutgers was like the difference and just thinking about how I got here and
just being grateful for that and like I don't know I've had a lot of overwhelming moments
yeah but that was the first thing I remember about Rutgers
My first day was pretty cool I got to campus I was on College Ave I had basic comp early in the morning so when I
got out of class I just was like really looking around the campus to see what goes on on a
college campus and I swear like coming out of Kintock and coming out of you know coming
from Newark I never seen grass this green like it was so crazy cause I had been incarcerated
where it was like they don't really care about the grass but I specifically remember how
green the grass was and I saw students playing frisbee kicking soccer balls around and I
just saw everyone out living life and at that moment I really decided like this is what
life is about living for the moment and living to do things like this to do greatness
I've faced several struggles my first year here I had a C minus in class every step of the
way as I was taking this course it was like harder and harder and it was challenging me
to raise my level of education to give more effort to seek assistance
My best time at Rutgers was the Michelle Alexander event and just prisoner's awareness week as a whole
that really galvanized a strong movement and sense of identify on campus for the Mountainview
Program and the student organization not many people knew about us on campus we had the
support from deans and faculty and some students but when we did that event when Walter and
I got up there and spoke before like four hundred plus people and everyone was talking
to us afterwards getting our contact information saying how moved they were by the speech like
that was really a defining moment for myself and the program
And of course just a lot of talk and a lot of consciousness raising isn't going to be enough we also got to be willing
to get to work and in my view that means building an underground railroad for people who are
released from prison an underground railroad for people who are struggling to make a genuine
break for real freedom and that's what Mountainview represents an underground railroad
What Mountainview has help me to discover is that I love to inspire people I started doing *** speaking
engagements at different schools and the feeling is so amazing it's something that's indescribable you can't recreate the feeling
of giving back no way shape or form can you recreate that and once I stumbled across that
feeling it was addictive I just kept wanting to help more people speak to more people let
people know that just because you been to prison it doesn't mean that your shut off from the world
I've come across this question a lot especially being a recipient of some
awards especially the Harry S. Truman scholarship they were a lot of articles posted online
and I got around to reading the reviews and people would say things like this all the
time like this isn't fair I'm paying off loans that I been paying off for the last five years
and they give this felon a scholarship and my response to that has always been you know
you gave me a scholarship if you want to call it that fine you can say that you gave me
a scholarship it was for thirty thousand dollars thirty thousand dollar scholarship but I will
never go back to prison and that's something that you would've paid fifty thousand dollars
a year for every year I was there so what would you prefer