Baylor Bears Behind Bars

The Cleveland Correctional Center looks exactly like you’d expect a prison to look: high chain-link fencing and razor wire on the outside, gray and cold on the inside. When you enter, a door locks behind you before another one will open. You walk down a long industrial-smelling concrete hall, dotted with reinforced doors and khaki-clad prison guards.

Then something totally unexpected happens—you enter the room where the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) operates its classes. Inside, it’s like Mary Kay sales rally meets motorcycle gang—it’s “Etiquette Night” at the prison.

Another thing you wouldn’t expect in this prison is a group of sixteen students from Baylor University—members of the Baylor Business Women (BBW) club. They were on hand Friday, September 25, for the event—the group’s fourth visit to Etiquette Night.

They entered the PEP room to the sound of loud music and ran through a tunnel made by the uplifted hands of the inmates—just like what parents do after their children’s soccer game. Guests and prisoners shook hands and introduced themselves, and the fifty-nine female guests (including ten A&M coeds, the mother and sister of a PEP graduate, and eight California women from a group called “God Chicks”) made their way to seats on one side of the room, while the inmates sat in the middle section.

The next five hours were a combination of fraternity mixer, Aggie yell practice, and twelve-step meeting. There were introductions, an etiquette quiz, dinner, and a wrap-up session, all punctuated by music, dancing, rapping, personal testimonies, and prayer.

“They have hope again, and it just fills the room,” said Melanie Smith, an academic adviser at Baylor and sponsor of BBW, about the reason she keeps coming back and bringing Baylor women to the event.

Baylor senior Jacquel Haywood has visited the prison five times, mostly for PEP Etiquette Night. During a sharing time at the end of the evening, she told the group, “Every single time, I learn something new—about business or about myself. My oldest brother has been incarcerated for most of my life, and my second-oldest brother is facing ten to fifty. So I know and understand. Everybody makes mistakes, but it’s how you fix those mistakes that shows character.”

PEP, founded in 2004 by a former Wall Street venture capitalist, is a five-month Christian business training program that teaches inmates about character as well as cash flow. The program includes classroom work every weekday, and the end result is a fleshed-out business plan for each inmate to implement upon his release. Along the way, prisoners are mentored by CEO volunteers and MBA students, including quite a few from Baylor. Baylor faculty and staff also volunteer as mentors, providing input on business plans via mail and visiting the prison for events like Concept Day, Selling Night, Business Plan Workshop, Pitch Day, and finally graduation.

While CEOs and MBA students of every ilk volunteer to be mentors or judges for the various business events, Etiquette Night is for ladies only.

“It’s a good time to get non-business women involved with the class, since all of our other events are geared towards business people,” said Kami Recla, chief of staff for PEP. “Also, many of the participants have had very limited interaction with females during their incarceration, so we want to help them get comfortable speaking with professional and proper women—just like we want them to get comfortable interacting with people in business suits.”

After the entry ritual, each inmate introduced himself, his business idea, and accompanying slogan. They had practiced their introductions for hours, and it showed. Several of the business slogans incorporated a group yell or response. Business ideas included companies offering welding, van rides, moving, horse-shoeing, child care, a mobile arcade, paralegal services, lawn services, and more.

But before the introductions, in order to make their way to the front of the room, the inmates had to dance. Yep, dance.

“The dancing is a good ice breaker to help break down the barriers between the participants and the guests,” PEP’s Recla explained. The “goofy” element, according to PEP representatives, is also part of breaking down the “tough guy” image that many of the men brought with them to prison.

After the PEP participants came the guests. They too had to dance—in groups, thank goodness—to the front of the room and introduce themselves. Next there was an etiquette quiz, answered by prisoners and guests assembled into mixed groups. Questions covered such topics as dining etiquette, business attire, and dating behavior.

At dinner, the inmates pulled out chairs for the ladies, made sure everyone was served before beginning, and put their napkins in their lap. They asked politely for the rolls and always passed the salt and pepper together to the right. When a lady spoke, they listened intently.

But mostly the ladies wanted to hear from them. Charles—only first names can be used according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice rules—who attended the University of Texas at Arlington, said PEP was tougher than college. “The thing about PEP is you can’t get by just making the grade,” he said. “It’s about character—if you don’t change, you’re not going to be able to succeed.”

Goree, who graduated from Alcorn State, said he thought PEP was just a business program when he signed up. “But when I got here, it was a whole lot more, and I’m thankful,” he said.

Volunteers like the Baylor students find inspiration in the efforts of the inmates to turn their lives around.

“I think people have the mentality that prison breaks people, and I guess it does,” said sophomore Gretchen Gruenberg, a pre-business major. “But that program makes them whole. The focus is not on what they did, but on what they are doing and where they are going.”

Senior accounting major Kalie Karnes said, “People think all the time, ‘I did this thing, and now my life is over.’ But now I went to prison, and I met these guys who are making something of themselves, despite the past. They have so much hope.”

PEP recruits prisoners from all over the state of Texas, and once they are accepted into the program, they are transferred to the Cleveland unit, north of Houston. Since its inception, PEP has graduated five hundred inmates, and fifty-five of them have businesses up and running. (A typical PEP business plan includes a savings plan that can take up to two years before a business is ready to be launched.) The current class, PEP’s twelfth, is one of the larger ones, with sixty prisoners. Graduation is scheduled for December 4.