From Ex-Convict to Student, Life On a College Campus
LONG BEACH, Calif. (Oct. 15, 2018) –A panel of four formerly incarcerated female students will discuss the unique traumas and challenges they face as women in a first-ever event from Rising Scholars, a Long Beach State University student group devoted to the needs of formerly incarcerated students.
“What I understand from talking with our students and being their mentor and advisor is that victimization and trauma among women who have been incarcerated is very high, much higher than it is for men,” said criminal justice professor and lawyer James Binnall.
Binnall, who acts as lead faculty advisor for Rising Scholars and has experience with incarceration, will moderate the panel.
“You have this co-occurring PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) where there are the issues that come with the psychological impacts that come with having been victimized/brutalized at some point in their lives,” Binnall said. “It’s a different dynamic.”
The event titled My Sister’s Keeper will be held on Oct. 15in the University Student Union Ballroom and feature student panelists from Long Beach State University and Cal State Dominguez Hills. The Department of Sociology, School of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Emergency Management and Rising Scholars will sponsor the event.
Rising Scholars was founded in the spring of 2016. This year it has about 25 student participants whose lives have been touched by either having a close relative or friends imprisoned or because they have served time in prison themselves.
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About the campus:
Long Beach State University is a teaching-intensive, research-driven university committed to providing highly valued undergraduate and graduate degrees critical for success in the globally minded 21st century. Annually ranked among the best universities in the West and among the best values in the entire nation, the university’s eight colleges serve more than 37,500 students. The campus values and is recognized for rich educational opportunities provided by excellent faculty and staff, exceptional degree programs, diversity of its student body, fiduciary and administrative responsibility and the positive contributions faculty, staff, students and more than 300,000 alumni make on society.
