‘Stand Up Speak Out’ Connects MMC’s Prison Education and 71st Street Students Through Art
Open gallery
When Tabitha Batu-Tiako ’26 attended the Stand Up Speak Out Arts and Social Justice Festival last year to support classmates showcasing work, she knew little about the event or its driving force: MMC’s long history at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for women.
The College has awarded degrees at the facility, located an hour north of the city, since 1997, designating it an official extension campus in 2004. Stand Up Speak Out serves as an academic and creative exchange between students at Bedford Hills and 71st Street, with classes at each site collaborating on visual and performing arts projects that are filmed and then screened at both locations.
Seeing the powerful content that’s come out of the partnership was enough to convince Batu-Tiako, a Public Relations and Strategic Communications and BFA Film and Media Production major, to get involved. This fall, she took the production class Film, Art, Theatre, Dance: Stand Up Speak Out, one of four cross-disciplinary courses at 71st Street to contribute to the 2025 festival. They adapted work created by students in Bedford Hills’ Theatre Production Workshop and Projects in Digital Sound class, with final products shown on December 2 in the Judith Mara Carson Center for Visual Arts.
In one collaboration, Bedford Hills students recounted impactful moments in their lives—such as working with Puppies Behind Bars, a nonprofit that trains service and therapy dogs for veterans and trauma survivors—which 71st Street students translated into animated visuals and short films.
“Stand Up Speak Out gives you a chance to be part of something bigger than yourself,” she said. “I walked away from it having learned not only how hard Bedford Hills students work, and what their day-to-day lives are like, but also about our community and even Marymount history. It’s such a meaningful opportunity for students.”
Launched in 2015 by Associate Professor of Communication and Media Arts Erin Greenwell, Stand Up Speak Out began as a space for 71st Street students to respond to stories of police brutality. However, Greenwell, who also serves as MMC’s Ferraro Fellow in Prison Education and is exploring how the College’s three learning sites can work together, saw an opportunity to expand its purpose. Today, the festival is one of several events—including the academic conference Crossing Borders and Honors Day—helping to drive conversation between students at 71st Street and in MMC’s prison education programs.
“For me, the learning goals of Stand Up Speak Out are always to inform more people about the Bedford Hills College Program, which is a proud tradition, particularly given how it started in the 1990s, with Bedford Hills students advocating for their own education,” Greenwell said. At the time, she noted, federal funding for higher education in prison had just been eliminated, and most college programs in New York State facilities came to a halt. That included the one at Bedford Hills, which had been administered by Mercy College.
At the urging of incarcerated students and community activists, MMC led a consortium of colleges to reinstate courses at Bedford Hills in 1997 and became the degree-granting institution. In 2019, the College expanded its prison education work and began awarding degrees at the Taconic Correctional Facility for women, in partnership with Hudson Link for Higher Education.
Besides creating opportunities for connection, Stand Up Speak Out also highlights the impressive creative and scholarly work emerging from MMC’s prison education programs. In the past, Greenwell has tried to increase visibility for Bedford Hills students at the festival by inviting program alumni who are now on the outside to speak on panels. This year, however, she sought to amplify the voices of students and alums still on the inside.
The 2025 festival included filmed performances by G Star Steppers, a step team composed of Bedford Hills students, and interviews with the troupe’s members. The team has become a mainstay at the facility’s communal celebrations and provides an outlet students wouldn’t otherwise have; watching them “underscores the sense of community within the college program,” Greenwell said.
Greenwell also highlighted the 2025 Bedford Hills commencement address, delivered by Tami E., a 2023 graduate. Tami E. has not only encouraged fellow incarcerated women at Bedford Hills to pursue college but has served as an example of what’s possible. In 2024, she earned her first master’s degree at the facility in Ministry, Justice, and Carceral Hermeneutics and is now working on a second in Business Administration. She’s also proposed a course of study for a doctoral program she hopes will be approved.
In her speech, Tami explained that “choosing education while incarcerated is not about accumulating facts or credentials.” “It’s about building a type of inner strength that can repair harm and reshape a life,” she said. “It is about saying, ‘I am worthy, and I have something valuable to contribute.’ Education enriches our lives and the lives of those we love and know.”
Moreover, she emphasized that character is the true goal of education—an important point, Greenwell said, for students on the outside as well as the inside.
Greenwell is exploring additional ways to help amplify the voices of Bedford Hills students at Stand Up Speak Out and beyond, through creative technology. She piloted a Projects in Digital Sound course, teaching it for the first time at the facility this fall. With its focus on digital storytelling, Bedford Hills students learned to use recording equipment and software, and write and edit stories with music and sound effects.
Down the road, Greenwell hopes to combine the class with an animation course she’s previously taught at Bedford Hills so that, rather than relying solely on people from the outside to come to the facility to film or animate student projects, students can begin doing some of that work. “How exciting would it be if instead of our Bedford students saying someone’s going to come in and tell our stories, they could just tell them themselves?” she said.
Published: December 23, 2025
MMC Celebrates its Final Prison Education Commencement Ceremonies—and a Lasting Legacy
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