Students for correcting Corrections

By Cara Bayles

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Last Friday, college students gathered on Boston Common with megaphones and chalkboard signs, in a fledgling attempt to form a statewide student movement advocating reform of Massachusetts' Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) system.

Recently, Gov. Patrick drafted a bill to seal CORI documents to five years for a misdemeanor and 10 for a felony (it currently stands at 10 and 15 years, respectively). During a recent Statehouse hearing, Sen. Diane Wilkerson, D-Boston, called the measure "CORI repair, not CORI reform," and criticized the governor for not trying to amend the law more. The students, led by Boston Workers Alliance (BWA), an unemployment activist group, are pushing to reduce the waiting period further, to three and seven years.

Sarah Lunnie, a student at Boston College, says CORIs can be accessed by potential employers and landlords, who might not understand the documents. "They're never seen as an applicant, they're criminals for the rest of their lives," Lunnie says. "Universities are the largest employers in the state. They're value-driven institutions, producing the leaders of tomorrow."

Students at many schools are working on "ban the box" campaigns, encouraging university human resources departments to eliminate the question about convictions on application forms, postponing the background check until the applicant is deemed eligible. Anti-discrimination law prohibits an employer from refusing to hire a qualified applicant with a CORI, unless it's relevant to the job.

Aaron Tanaka, of BWA, says student involvement in the campaign was a welcome surprise. "Students are notorious for not understanding local community issues. I went to Harvard, and they think they own Cambridge—well, I guess they do, in a way," he says. "College campuses have their own police. I had friends who got arrested, but they were protected by an elite institution, so it didn't go on their record, and they didn't have that life sentence. Everyone should get that second chance." Tanaka adds that students need to remember this inequity when they get involved in a community movement. "They need to take their cues from people who are affected by this, and who will continue to be affected by this after the students graduate."

Tanaka hopes students at universities outside Boston can sway rural legislators ambivalent about CORI reform.

"We have a responsibility, given our resources as college students," Lunnie says. "I would encourage any student to check out CORIspondence.org, to start a movement on their campus."