Alumnus Elevating Self, Others Thanks to Rising Scholars
“I knew if I got out, I’d just be going back in. Now I see my value and others see my value. It took going to college and doing well for me to believe I could make it outside of prison.”
- Benny Gutierrez, Rising Scholars Alumnus
By Luciana Chavez Special to Merced College When Benny Gutierrez first arrived at Chowchilla’s Valley State Prison in 2014, he attended a mandatory orientation. “One guy was talking about education and getting your GED,” Gutierrez said. “Another talked about spiritual services. I was listening and thinking, ‘Inmates don’t talk like this, with integrity, looking out for someone else.’ I thought they were fakers.” They were sincere, and the Chico native was yearning to redirect a life that had long weighed too heavily with tragedy—he lost two siblings during childhood—and time served. Gutierrez has always taken the initiative, whether on the streets at age 10, behind bars for large portions of three decades, or back on the outside since 2018. “It could be a trap house, a gang or a student-led club,” he said. “I make things happen.” So when positive opportunities arose in prison, Gutierrez began joining everything: a victims’ impact group; the Gavel Club (like Toastmasters for the incarcerated); Freedom to Choose, which helps incarcerated individuals through education; and a screenwriting class. When Merced College’s Rising Scholars program began offering in-person classes at VSP in 2016, Gutierrez joined the first cohort. He began taking college courses, completing 14, and stockpiling victories. In 2017, he won first place in fiction in the PEN America Prison Writing Contest. The script he wrote for that screenwriting class was chosen by the Pembroke Taparelli Arts & Film Festival in Los Angeles for filming. The resulting short film on Gutierrez’s life was featured at the 2017 festival. Gutierrez was the first Rising Scholar to be named Merced College Student of the Month. With outstanding grades, he learned about the Phi Theta Kappa honor society from Merced College professor Jennifer McBride. He started a chapter at VSP and served as its first president. After his 2018 release, Gutierrez enrolled at Butte College, which didn’t have Rising Scholars. So he started one with the same structure, and it eventually became a Rising Scholars chapter. Gutierrez, who earned AAs in Journalism and Social & Behavioral Sciences in 2020, also wrote an article for the Butte student newspaper exposing the college for requiring people, as a condition of employment, to say if they’d been incarcerated. That practice was made illegal by California’s Ban the Box law. “That’s one of the accomplishments I’m most proud of,” he said. Gutierrez also found outlets for his humanities and museum studies background. He put on a Black Lives Matter show that raised $2,000 for civil rights advocacy group Color of Change in the spring of 2020. The pandemic had shuttered galleries, so Gutierrez simply staged the exhibit in his backyard. He opened Greenhouse Studio & Gallery in May 2020, which supports local artists and social justice activists. He curated a Greenhouse show featuring formerly and currently incarcerated artists in February 2021 called Art in Corrections: Images from Behind the Wall. Gutierrez also founded Rebound Scholars at Chico State in 2021. In April, the program received state funding to become a chapter of Project Rebound, which is to the CSU system what Rising Scholars is for California Community Colleges. Gutierrez was a Chico State Student Ambassador and served on the Institutional Review Board. He graduated magna cum laude in 2022 as the Humanities Graduate of the Year and won the Lt. Rawlins Merit Scholarship, one of Chico State’s highest academic honors given. This avalanche of success became possible the day Gutierrez walked down the hall at VSP, saw a poster that told him to “sign up for college classes,” and did just that. “It’s different this time, because I’m seeing the positive impact I can have on my family and my community,” he said. “Before I was the guy who visited cousins and they’d be like, ‘I don’t wanna be around that guy.’ Now I’m the cousin they call for help and advice. … It’s a huge turnaround for me.” Gutierrez is now being pursued and valued for his perspective. Just last month, he spoke on an Empowerment Avenue panel in San Francisco. His life vibrates with possibility. “I knew if I got out [of prison], I’d just be going back in,” Gutierrez said. “Now I see my value and others see my value. … It took going to college and doing well for me to believe I could make it outside of prison. “I have job offers in Chico, the Bay Area and Los Angeles,” he added. “I’m torn.” Gutierrez gives a deep bow of gratitude to McBride, one of two original Rising Scholars faculty at VSP. “She believed in me,” he said. “She helped me hone my writing skills. She nominated me for Student of the Month, and I won. Had I not started stacking up wins with her and Merced College, I don’t know where I would have ended up. I love Professor McBride. She changed my life forever.”
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