LEANN BURKE / THE DEPAUW
Discussion around “Crime and Punishment” consumed this year’s annual PossePlus Retreat (PPR). Every year around February, the Posse Scholars and their guests travel to a camp about an hour away from DePauw for this weekend long trip.
“Every year there’s a new theme, last year’s was on Social Justice Movements, this year’s was on Crime and Punishment, which was about the prison system, immigration, what punishment means, how do we justify crime, is our justice system fair; so there was a lot of talk about that,” explained sophomore Posse Scholar Yesenia Silva.
Posse facilitators lead the large and small group discussions, but it’s up to the Posse Scholars and their guests, which included DePauw students, faculty and staff, to continue the discussion.
“I felt that it being my second time, I was more willing to be more involved and not afraid of speaking my mind,” Silva said. “It can be hard especially being in a big group with many different people and many different age groups that you can’t say or voice your opinion sometimes.”
The topic of discussion changes every year, and it’s up to the Posse Scholars nationwide to vote on the topic they want to discuss that year. Each Posse Scholar can bring one guest to the retreat, which they hope will help foster further discussion as they offer new perspectives. Among many DePauw students, Director of Public Safety Angela Nally, Biology Professor Dana Dudle and President Casey attended the retreat this year.
“Posse is about leadership so I think that as Posse scholars we were able to show leadership with getting everyone involved, especially the ‘pluses,’ who are our guests, and making sure that everyone was able to voice their opinion because there’s some people that didn’t voice their opinion or were just listening, which is fine, but sometimes I would say ‘Hey do you want to say anything? I heard that you said this, do you want to talk to the group about it?’” Silva said.
Although the focus of the retreat is on discussing the topic at hand, the discussions can sometimes lead to frustration or heated arguments.
“The retreats are peaceful but then there’s discussion,” Silva said. “People are going to get uncomfortable; people are going to get frustrated.”
“I feel like this Posse retreat really hit home for a lot of people, especially with a lot of things that are going on in the world and our own community that we face,” said senior Posse Scholar Dione Gordon. “A lot of people who were at the Posse retreat are those who are considered minorities so we do face a lot of this ‘crime and punishment.’ It may not be us but it could be people in our families that we know closely, so as a senior it really hit home because it made me think about when I leave campus, where is my destiny to be?”
Many other Posse Scholars agreed that discussions get heated at the PossePlus Retreat, but that can be a good thing.
“I can't really put into words how PPR influenced me,” said sophomore PossePlus Retreat guest Ellen Tinder. “It was so amazing to see people from all different parts of our campus, from students to faculty to staff, all come together and really dig deep into an issue that is so prevalent and so important in our society today. It was an eye-opening experience and I wish everyone would have been able to experience it.”
Forty-eight colleges and universities in the U.S. have Posse Programs, including Denison University, Cornell University and Vanderbilt University, all of whom have their own PossePlus Retreats every year discussing the same topics that DePauw does.
Although issues such as Crime and Punishment in America cannot be solved in one retreat in Indiana, these discussions can empower people to go out and change things.
“The result was that this is a working process,” Silva said. “It’s impossible to fix everything in one retreat. It’s hard, you can’t come up with a game plan right away, so I think it’s just leaving knowing that we are going to do something about it, and it’s going to take time.”