ON THE COVER
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Mark Taylor, left, Tony Wallin and Eric Clark, far right, at the Humboldt State University campus.
‘Beacons of Hope’
Caption
Humboldt State’s Project Rebound builds a prison-to-college pipeline Credit
By Kimberly Wear kim@northcoastjournal.com
Photos by Dave Woody
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NORTH COAST JOURNAL • Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021 • northcoastjournal.com
bout the last thing on Tony Wallin’s mind when he arrived at Humboldt State University in 2018 was becoming one of the mainsprings behind a new club — let alone a new campus program — for students whose lives had been irreparably changed by their experiences with the criminal justice system, students like him. He hadn’t come intending to get involved. In many ways, he was looking for an escape — a fresh start far removed from his hometown of Sacramento, where he still bumped into people who knew him back when he was using and selling drugs. What he wanted was to be in a place surrounded by nature, where no one knew his name and he wouldn’t run into his past on a street corner. While Wallin says he was immediately taken with the region’s rugged coastline and redwood forests, that sense of place didn’t translate into the halls of campus. Hanging over him was what he describes in a 2019 Osprey article as a heavy fog — the vestiges of his time behind bars. “I didn’t see any other students with tattoos on their face and neck. I’d been incarcerated, “ Wallin says. And, even with an associate degree already in hand, he began asking himself: “Do I really belong here?” So the journalism major began seeking out some sort of assistance for those struggling with what comes after incarceration. While he came up empty-handed, Wallin did find open doors at the offices of Associate Director of Admissions Steven Ladwig and Sociology Department Chair Renee Byrd, both of whom encouraged him to take the lead in filling the void. Resisting the idea at first, Wallin instead decided to write about the lack of resources for HSU’s student newspaper The Lumberjack. Then, he says, it became clear to him: “I can write the story and start a club.” A serendipitous meeting with fellow student Franklin Porter, who — like Wallin — was vested in reforming the criminal justice system, helped the Formerly Incarcerated Students Club gain a footing on campus. And, together with a small cadre of members, they set the foundation for HSU’s Project Rebound. Those efforts, Wallin says, happened to coincide with HSU President Tom Jackson’s arrival, creating what he describes as “a perfect storm” for starting the local program, which officially launched in October of 2020. Wallin says he and Porter “bombarded” Jackson with constant visits to talk about bringing Project Rebound to Humboldt. “We needed campus buy-in, we needed stakeholders and it totally worked,” Wallin says. “From the beginning, he was supportive and wanted to see the program get
