Seeing Michael G. Santos sit in front of Watson Forum Tuesday night, wearing a knit sweater atop a shirt and tie, one would never know he had been in prison little over a year ago.
Lambda Sigma Upsilon fraternity brought Santos in for his presentation entitled "Mass Incarceration: Up Close and Personal" as part of their HYPEFEST 2013.
"I decided to bring awareness outside of the classroom because issues such as incarceration should not only be studied inside closed doors but also to the wider DePauw community," senior Jorge Pule, founder of the fraternity on campus, said.
Professor of sociology and anthropology Rebecca Bordt introduced Santos. She had been a prison guard years prior and pointed out that just one year in the prisons had changed her tremendously.
Santos served 26.
He grew up in stable home in Seattle with his father, a Cuban immigrant. Toward the middle of the 1980s he moved to Miami, where he got caught up in cocaine trafficking. On Aug. 11, 1987, he was arrested and later convicted on all counts.
"I felt remorse," Santos said. "I had humiliated my family. What could I do to gain people's respect?"
He decided the answer was to get an education. By 1992, while still in prison, he had his undergraduate degree. After writing to countless law school and graduate programs, Hofstra University offered him a master's degree in the field of his choosing. He chose to study mass incarceration and prison systems.
"What better place to study this than in the community of felons?" said Santos.
In his studies, he discovered many flaws in the prison system.
"We should be working to enrich the lives of our fellow men, not make them worse," he commented.
After earning his degree, he wanted to obtain a Ph.D. but was halted by the warden. Education had carried him through his first eight years in prison, so for the remainder he began to write.
"The dedication he put in on his own to become the very much success of what I saw in him on Tuesday is something I revere a great deal," first-year Paris Murray said.
Santos received a letter during his sentence from a woman he had known as a child, Carroll Goodman, complaining about his drug use and how wrong it was. They began chatting through letters.
At this point, Santos stopped his monologue and pointed to a woman in the audience.
"And one thing led to another and I married her."
He began sending her his written books. She typed them up, and would work with a publisher to get them printed. Today he has seven books published, as well as several articles, many of which are used across the country in criminology classes.
On Aug. 13, 2012, after spending 9,135 days behind bars, he was released to a halfway house. When he gave his speech on Tuesday, he had been a free man for a mere 92 days.
According to Santos, there are more than 2.3 million people in prison, which accounts for nearly $75 billion per year. This is a dramatic increase that has happened extremely quickly. If the trend continues, by the time the current generation's children reach school age the number of prisoners will be nearly 10 million.
"I see it as the greatest social injustice of our time," Santos said.
Some audience members wished for more elaboration on Santos' suggestion, "be active and be heard," for creating change.
"I would have wished that he had given the audience more direction in terms of what we can do to help stop mass incarceration," sophomore Grace Flinkinger, said. "I will say, however, that I found Mr. Santos' story fascinating and refreshing because he was able to hold such optimism amidst adversity."
Many other students found his presentation inspiring as well including Murray.
"As much as he is trying to learn from everyone," Murray said. "I think everyone could learn a lot from him."