This fall, 91 young adults from Dorchester—men and women between the ages of 17 and 24 who’d dropped out of school, were jobless, or were members of gangs—were attending classes at Bunker Hill Community College and other local schools, all because of College Bound’s help. (The program helps all disenfranchised youths.) Another 20 have already earned their associate’s degrees; one has earned a 4-year bachelor’s degree, from Brandeis University. It remains the only program in the country bold enough to target gang members as college material. Until Culliton came along, few dared dream such a thing. “What Mark did...it was fearless,” says Kamau “Kat” Parker, a College Bound staff member who was one of Culliton’s first hires when he took over the program in 2007. “I remember one director saying that if we got two students into college the first time out, that would be a miracle. We got 11 in. That was our first cohort. “I was the only case manager at that time, and now we have about eight or nine case managers. Mark kept pushing the envelope. ‘We gotta do this, we gotta do that. We have to do the work.’ That’s how we got to where we are.” A trim 51-year-old, with hip glasses and graying hair, Culliton was hardly a gang expert when he came to Dorchester. The son of a Navy pilot, he spent his early childhood in Calcutta, India, where his father worked for the Ford Foundation after leaving the military. His family later moved to Cambridge, where Culliton attended BB&N’s Upper School for two years before finishing high school at the Cambridge School of Weston.
recruit the best students—that led him to realize how important it was for communities such as Dorchester to send its most troubled young adults to college. “I go back to this idea that nobody I know who’s raising their kids (in the suburbs) wants them to go get a job. They want them to go to college, or expect them to go to college,” Culliton says. “Fundamentally, Dorchester’s (youths) are no less capable, no less intelligent, than young people everywhere. So, why wouldn’t we expect college with them?” Even for gang members, he continues, college is a better financial option. A typical associate’s degree holder earns about $38,000 a year, according to federal statistics, while a typical bachelor’s holder earns nearly $49,000—much more money than the typical gang member makes.
———————
“Beyond that, Culliton says, gang life just isn’t sustainable: you get shot at, thrown in jail, or harassed constantly by police.”
———————
Beyond that, Culliton says, gang life just isn’t sustainable: you get shot at, thrown in jail, or harassed constantly by police. “So, almost everybody wants out, to some extent,” he says. Though Culliton’s reasoning has proven true, many doubted him when he first came to College Bound eight years ago.
After college, he joined the Peace Corps, helping farmers in Thailand cultivate silkworms and frogs. Returning to the United States, he earned an M.B.A. from Yale School of Management, and joined the charter-school movement.
Some viewed him as a privileged outsider who didn’t know what he was talking about. Others criticized his decision to rebrand the organization: College Bound was, for decades, known as Dorchester Federated Neighborhood House, a nonprofit that sponsored food pantries, community centers, and the like. (About half of the program’s $6.5 million budget now goes to getting students into college.)
Ironically, it was Culliton’s work on charter schools—which traditionally
Others questioned Culliton’s credibility simply because he was white.
26
CULLITON OUTSIDE OF COLLEGE BOUND DORCHESTER. RIGHT: CULLITON ENJOYS A VISIT WITH SOME COLLEGE BOUND DORCHESTER’S EARLY EDUCATION STUDENTS.
The Bowdoin-Geneva section of Dorchester, where College Bound is located, is largely black, as are its gangs. But Culliton, his constituents soon learned, wasn’t so easily judged. He was refreshingly honest, using words such as “gang-bangers” and “thugs” when speaking in public about his program. Jobs created for high school graduates were, in his estimation, actually a bad thing, Culliton began telling people, “because once you get a job, you stop going to school.” To prove his commitment to College Bound, he moved his family to the heart of Dorchester, about a half mile from Ronan Park, and began jogging the same streets where gang members hung out. Perhaps most surprisingly, Culliton spoke openly about his own criminal history. Angered by his parents’ divorce when he was a teenager, Culliton did drugs, dealt drugs, and broke into homes to steal. Because he was white, from an upper middle class family, and went to good schools, he got a second chance—“actually,
a second, a third, and a fourth,” he says. It’s why he believes so strongly that gang members and other disenfranchised youths deserve the same. “Mark’s the kind of person who won’t always say the right things to make everybody feel good—he’ll ruffle a feather,” Parker says. “He has a rebel spirit, and that’s something that people from this kind of community can appreciate.”
———————— ”He has a rebel spirit, and that’s something that people from this kind of community can appreciate.“ ———————— Tina Holland, an ESL teacher and student mentor for College Bound, believes the program would be nowhere without Culliton’s leadership.“Mark sent out an e-mail a few weeks ago, and I’ve been talking about it ever since because it really touched me,” she says. “He (explained) how he had misstepped in a meeting...and how he learned a lesson from that. You have to have
leader who can say, ‘Yes, I have flaws too, but we’re going to do this together and be successful regardless.’ That’s what I teach my students.” College Bound has far to go to meet its ultimate goals, as it still has not seen a neighborhood completely change, or a gang entirely disband. Last August, a College Bound student was shot as he was leaving class—a stark reminder of how great a challenge the transition is. At the same time, there is much to praise. College Bound is currently helping nearly 600 adults—gang members and non gang members alike—at various points on their road to college, offering everything from high school-equivalency classes to inmates at South Bay House of Correction, to financial stipends for those attending college, to after-school programs for children of adult students. Soon, Culliton hopes to expand the program further into Boston, and possibly other troubled cities, such as Lawrence and Lowell. College Bound has begun to draw interest nationally, too, from other communities beset
by gang violence. As Culliton walks out the door of College Bound’s main school building, he greets a young man standing on the stoop. His name is Paul Burns, and he is 24.
———————— ”What Mark did…it was fearless.“ ———————— “Just got out of probation, due to a couple of letters from ‘The Man’ here,” Burns says, referring to Culliton. But Culliton will have none of it. “Due to his great work!” Culliton rebuts. “You’ve been coming here how long now? Over a year? Every day? Working hard. Working with us, helping us out. Studying.” Culliton says goodbye, and as he walks to his car, he explains how Burns had been in jail a portion of every year of his life since he was 16. College Bound finally ended that streak. “Paul isn’t unusual in wanting to do the right thing,” Culliton says. “He’s just got to have adults who believe in him.”❖
27