Smith College student organization collecting books through April

April 12, 2022 | Ryan Feyre
rfeyre@thereminder.com

NORTHAMPTON – Smith College’s student-led Community Service Organization (CSO) is currently collecting books and supplies throughout the month of April for Books Though Bars, a program in Franklin County that gets books and resources in the hands of incarcerated people.

How it began

Dori Mondon is an Ada Comstock scholar, which means she is part of the non-traditional students program at Smith College. She is in her junior year of school, and a mom who serves as the community education co-chair on Smith’s CSO. Her goal in this position is to find specific educational opportunities for the college, whether it be bringing in guest speakers or finding other worthwhile projects.

Mondon developed the idea for the book drive while thinking of educational opportunities for Smith. Before the omicron variant hit, she wanted to organize trips to Turner Falls to help pack donated books for prisoners and send little notes of kindness simultaneously. Once restrictions tightened due to omicron, however, Mondon decided to establish a large community book drive instead.

“I put out three posts on social media and did not realize the response was going to be so immediate,” said Mondon. “So, we had to scramble for some organization.”

Also helping with coordination for this project is Claudia Olson, a senior at Smith who serves as the board chair of the CSO and focuses a lot on community engagement service work at Smith. As board chair, Olson conducts board meetings and oversees the implementation of projects spearheaded by the CSO.

In her social media posts, Mondon made a list of specific genres of books people should donate and emphasized how paperbacks are only allowed since many prisons do not accept hardcovers.

So far, Olson and Mondon have scheduled two community pickups, one that occurred on April 2, and another one that will happen on April 16. Mondon used a school van on April 2 to make nine stops around Hampshire County, picking up boxes of books that people decided to donate. She plans to do the same during the second pickup.

“People were really amazing about being selective according to the list,” said Mondon. “I went through everything, and it was amazing … there was no junk.”

Olson and Mondon also put bright turquoise bins in all of the school’s residential houses for collection, as well. Olson made a list of all the houses that have students who act as representatives for community service projects and made sure the bins went specifically to those houses. The CSO then made sure that these representatives told the students in their houses about this drive.

“We thought that this would be a really great way to encourage this sort of collection, because there’s about 50 to 80 students in each house, and they definitely all have gently-used books they can donate,” said Olson.

Businesses like Comics N’ More in Easthampton have been crucial in the donation process, as well, according to Mondon. With graphic novels being a high request, the business put together a bin of new and used books based off the list Mondon has provided on social media.

Smith’s humanities professors have also been a good source for books, according to Mondon, since they use a lot of text outside of traditional school textbooks. Because of this, there is a lot of alternative text that students will not keep once the semester is over.

Mondon also currently has a form circulating around social media that allows people to schedule pickup times or obtain a collection bin for an on-campus location at Smith. Through this form, Mondon is able to align a pickup route across the community and collect books at the addresses people provide.
People can also come by the Jandon Center at 013 Wright Hall on the Smith campus to drop off books, if they prefer. Locals who are familiar with campus can come to the center during open hours and drop off books.

At the end of April, the CSO is taking a bus full of student volunteers up to Turner Falls to deliver the books and spend an afternoon packaging the materials with little notes of kindness.

The broader initiative

“A lot of this ties into what is happening in our area, and the potential for CORI reform,” said Mondon, speaking on the grander prison reform and abolition initiatives that coincide with the book drive’s goal.

For example, Mondon and Olson took a trip to Boston as part of the Smith Alliance for Justice and Equity and met with a group called Prophetic Resistance-an organization working on a number of prison reform initiatives.

“They’re big into abolition, and they are also especially focused on CORI reform and expungement for people who are still languishing in jails and prisons for marijuana charges,” said Mondon.

“Just the history of abolition here in the Northampton area and in the valley in general really has people still caring about these issues,” said Mondon. “I think that’s one of the reasons the book drive has been so successful so far … People really believe in abolition here. They hate to think people are just languishing in jail without mental simulation.”

Mondon told Reminder Publishing that she has two pen pals who have both been in prison for most of their adult life due to decisions they made when they were teenagers. She describes them as “brilliant” men who, she opined were like a lot of people in this country and thrown into a system that very rarely provides any type of empathetic reform. One of the men offers community Ted Talks.

“Prison is not about reform,” Mondon added. “So, putting a book in somebody’s hands any way you can gives somebody an escape or way to educate themselves while they are in there is empowering. This is just one [project] that everyone can participate in.”

According to Olson and Mondon, these donated books cannot go to Massachusetts prisons because, according to state law, books can only be shipped to prisons across the commonwealth through one single vendor. This is something both Olson and Mondon hopes changes in the future, especially since Massachusetts is such a mecca for education.

“We talk a lot in class about how prison abolition has become a big movement around here in Northampton,” said Olson. “[This project] is a great way to bring these issues to light, and it also allows people to get involved with them any way they can.”

As part of this movement, critically acclaimed writer Reginald Dwayne Betts will be delivering a theatrical performance, “Felon: An American Washi Tale,” based on his acclaimed collection “Felon” that interweaves poetry with personal experience to deliver a “powerful exploration of art, fatherhood, punishment, and mass incarceration” on April 19, 7 p.m. at John M. Greene Hall. The event is open to the public, and masks and vaccine cards will be required.

The Poetry Center at Smith, which collaborated with other important organizations to bring Betts in, normally prints cards with every performer that comes to Smith. The center will place these cards in every book they donate for the Books Behind Bars initiative, while Mondon and Olson will place the other printed cards in the books they have already.

Those wishing to donate books can visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/22552459015/search/?q=Dori%20Mondon%20book. A list of what is requested for books is present in the post. People can also message Mondon on Facebook if they have any questions about arranging a pickup.

“We’re planning on making this a yearly initiative,” said Olson. “We think this project is great and we hope to keep going, but we just have to put the structure in place so that happens.”

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