The initial idea was based on a program that's been going on for 20 years at Sing Sing Prison in New York.

We're doing prison ministry by doing this, and our students are doing ministry by being there. And the prisoners are doing ministry to Vanderbilt folks. They're teaching us what it's like on the other side.

Instead of sitting in a classroom here on this very elite campus and talking about liberation and anti-colonial and anti-empire theology and black theology and feminist theology, let's give students the opportunity to be in a place where those issues are the daily life of the people. So now they're not just studying about these people. They're studying with them.

Those ministries don't do anything about changing the system. So, we were looking for a third alternative that would take seriously policy issues and try to change the system as well as work with individuals who are caught up in it.

They totally disregarded my mom's instructions.

People have this sense that as 21st-century humans we've gotten as high as we're going to go. But we're not played out as a species. We're still evolving, and these studies are a pretty good example of that.