Portland State Magazine Fall 2018

13 Capstone class f inds humanity among incarcerated youth. J ust kids WR I TT EN B Y STE PHAN I E ARGY EACH TERM , Deborah Smith Arthur asks the 15 students in her Juvenile Justice Senior Capstone course to remember the worst thing they’ve ever done—perhaps a secret no one else knows, something so terrible they would never admit it to anyone. “Now,” she tells them, “imagine that’s how people define you.” The exercise helps prepare her students for the work they’ll be doing with Arthur during the term: going into the Donald E. Long Detention Center in Portland to bring weekly writing and art work- shops to the youth incarcerated there. “We don’t romanticize, and we don’t demonize,” says Arthur. “There are definitely kids who have committed terrible crimes, and they need extra help. But at the same time, I’ve worked with a lot of kids who are phenomenal people who had one wrong moment.” The Juvenile Justice course is one of Portland State’s Senior Capstones—small, interdisciplinary seminars in which community-based learning is integrated with academic content during a student’s last year. In Arthur’s course, the students spend their first two weeks learning how to pres- ent a workshop and are taken on a lengthy tour of the detention facility, learning about its philosophy and standards.Then, for the rest of the term, they make regular visits to the detention center, working