Anthony Bongco/Staff

During the years most young adults spend completing college, UC Berkeley student Steven Czifra was serving a four-year sentence in solitary confinement.

By all accounts, Czifra had a rough childhood. Born into a family of addicts, he was smoking crack at age 9, in juvenile hall at age 13 and sentenced to nine and a half years in prison at age 14.

Now, as a 38-year-old transfer and re-entry student of English literature at UC Berkeley, Czifra has become an advocate for California state prison reform, protesting the use of solitary confinement. Most recently, he went on a hunger strike in solidarity with inmates of Pelican Bay State Prison, in which thousands of prisoners have been on hunger strike for 21 days as of Sunday.

In total, Czifra has spent eight years of his life in solitary confinement. When Czifra was 17 and serving a prison sentence for carjacking, he says he was found guilty of initiating a prison fight, which landed him a four-year term in solitary confinement. When he was 24, he says he took a plea bargain for another four years in solitary confinement after being found guilty of spitting on an officer and in violation of California’s three-strikes law.

While he was imprisoned at a Secure Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison, Czifra spent 22 and a half hours in his cell each day and was only allowed 90 minutes outside of his cell, which he would spend alone in a concrete, windowless pen. Czifra continues to suffer from severe anxiety and insomnia as a result.

“You take a person, you put them in a box, you don’t let them see the sun for eight years, you don’t let them talk to anybody or have fun,” Czifra said. “You don’t let them eat or make mistakes. The fact that I’m not a raving lunatic is a miracle.”

A few years after being released from prison in 2003, Czifra enrolled in a 12-step program, where he met his partner of seven years, Sylvia Garcia. Czifra began working odd jobs but found that they did not fulfill his academic ambitions.

“I owned a tree-trimming business, I was driving a tow-truck, I was swinging a hammer,” Czifra said, “and the entire time, I knew that I had other gifts that were being underused.”

Czifra originally received his GED in prison because of the promise of getting coffee and cookies in the prison quad. In his early 30s, he failed community college twice. The third time around, at the age of 34, he received straight A’s, helping him gain admission to UC Berkeley.

Today, Czifra lives in Albany with his partner and his 6-year-old son, Shane, whom he lovingly calls “the most incredible human being” he has ever met.
On an average sunny Tuesday afternoon, Czifra and his son spend the day bowling, playing with Legos and making lunch. Afterward, Czifra heads to his afternoon classes and does his homework for a few hours before having dinner with his family.

“If I could use one word to describe our family life, it would be ‘peaceful,’” Czifra said.

The 2-year old Czifra (left) is shown with his two siblings, Joy and Johnny.

Prison activism

Despite the joys that come with pursuing an education and having a fulfilling family life, Czifra still faces the lasting psychological effects of spending eight years detached from human interaction.

“The dominating theme of my life is overcoming anxiety,” Czifra said. “Unless I stop and think everything through, my life is an earthquake. I was by myself during the time when I learned how to be with other people … when my emotional and mental systems were forming.”

Czifra was introduced to the prison hunger strike movement by his friend and UC Berkeley peer Danny Murillo, who was also kept in solitary confinement.

In recent weeks, Czifra, Murillo and other members of the campus organization Human Rights of the Incarcerated at Cal have been holding demonstrations in support of the statewide Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition, which began in Pelican Bay State Prison on July 8. Last Monday, Billy “Guero” Sell, a state prison inmate who had participated in the hunger strike, committed suicide after allegedly being denied medical attention.

Leaders of the movement are demanding that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation comply with core demands, which include ending group punishment, changing policies that force prisoners to snitch on gang members and expanding privileges for inmates in solitary confinement.

“The reason why I’m in this movement is that I’m in California and I care about my community, and this isn’t happening in Palestine or North Korea,” Czifra said. “This is happening here.”

The nine-year old Czifra (left) poses with Johnny.

A scholarly take on prison reform

When speaking about how he spends his time at UC Berkeley, Czifra says he is thankful that he is in a place that allows him to combine his activism for prison reform with his academic scholarship.

Last fall, Czifra began attending a prison studies independent reading group taught by UC Berkeley academics in the ethnic studies and gender and women’s studies departments. There, Czifra explored the intellectual meaning behind mass incarceration in society.

Patricia Penn Hilden, professor emeritus of ethnic studies, developed a bond with Czifra during the class and began meeting with him independently to discuss literature.

“I introduced him to my husband, who is a professor of comparative literature, and they talk about Descartes once a week,” Hilden said.

Czifra said that he read the classics while incarcerated but was unable to apply the knowledge he gained in a prison setting. Now, he is able to articulate his ideas with people from all backgrounds — both within and outside of the prison system.

“There’s nothing he likes more than diving headfirst deep into the pool of the literature,” said Victoria Robinson, a lecturer on campus in the ethnic studies and gender and women’s studies departments. “It is probably the thing that got him through his years in prison and solitary confinement.”

Czifra says that when he first started college, he wanted to teach inmates literature after graduating, but now, he says he is considering other careers, ranging from being a lawyer to a professor of literature. After an unexpected journey from solitary confinement to UC Berkeley, Czifra says he’s certainly not afraid of taking a chance.

Steven Czifra, at age 38, poses in a Halloween costume with his partner, Sylvia Garcia, and his 6-year old son, Shane.

Contact Sophie Mattson at smattson@dailycal.org.

The post UC Berkeley student, former inmate, speaks out about solitary confinement appeared first on The Daily Californian.

ERIC CRAYPO/Courtesy

What do you get when you combine the efforts of the chief medical officer of the Beijing Olympics, a former professional soccer player turned Chancellor’s Public Scholar, a former Paralympic athlete, a coach from the Bay Area Outreach and Recreations Program, the director of the American Cultures Engaged Scholarship program, a Haas scholar, an intern for Fitness for All and a handful of students having fun in the most extraordinary of circumstances?

Meet Cal’s Goalball. Having only finished its first semester, the sport is already making national news.

“UC Berkeley is the first university in America to offer Goalball as an academic class for credit,” Matt Grigorieff, the architect behind the project, proudly tells us. “And that is fantastic.”

The class is a two-unit supplement to “American Sport, Culture and Education,” a class that fulfills the campuswide AC requirement. Each session is split into half theory and half playtime. After students discuss their readings, they engage in a rousing game at the RSF’s Blue Gym, a massive indoor court on the third floor. The game pits two teams of three against each other, and players score by throwing  balls into the opposing team’s goal.

The catch?

All players wear blindfolds.

Playing on a different team

For junior Alec Sundly, D-1 center midfielder for Cal’s men’s soccer team, maintaining leadership on his side of the court is paramount for victory. He nods at his two teammates, completely confident in their game. But this is the first time either player has ever been to the RSF (to say nothing of the fact that neither teammate has never played a sport before in his life). Sundly grins. He whispers a quick strategy, stretches his legs and then leaps into position. He can already feel the win.

The two teams wait for the command from the referee: “Eyeshades down. Quiet, please! Center! Play!”

In a rapid exchange, the bell-containing ball is tossed from one end of the court. Players duck, jump and dive into each other in an effort to protect the goal. Special tape on the floor helps the crawling players to “feel” where they are in the absence of their eyesight. If the team succeeds in blocking a score, possession changes.

Sweat glistens. Lungs expand. In the final score, Sundly’s team edges a narrow triumph of seven points to six. For a varsity Golden Bear, Sundly has a particularly even game. He scores two points! His two teammates, self-described as “athletically challenged,” divide the five. On this court, the playing field is equal.

Fitness for all

Ann Kwong is the internal president for the Disabled Students Union. Unlike Sundly, Kwong is visually impaired and travels around with a cane. Before Berkeley, athletics were the last thing on her mind.

“When I was a child, I never really understood the fascination my sighted peers had with sports,” she admits. “I didn’t feel like I was able to connect with them.”

All of this changed in the past year. Members in the Disabled Student’s Union expressed discontent with being unable to participate in sports teams. From able-bodied basketball to football, disabled students readily acknowledged the lack of athletic opportunities available to them. Then came the Bay Area Outreach and Recreation Program’s support in establishing Goalball — Berkeley style.

Goalball player makes a pass. Notice the eyeshades.

Grigorieff and Jessica Adams, both sighted Cal seniors, paired up to organize the discussion part of the class. Teaming with two BORP Goalball coaches, Brandon Young (nonsighted) and Jonathan Newman (sighted), the four have worked to create the most inclusive athletics class in the university’s history. With the guidance of Professor Derek Van Rheenen, the class has attracted students of all abilities.

Kwong beams, “Now, I realize sports are fun. It’s something you have to experience firsthand to understand — the feeling of belonging when you are part of the team or the sense of achievement when you are able to score a goal.” Her voice softening, she adds, “That’s something that rarely happens in reality.”

Fighting stereotypes

Grigorieff incorporates scholarly texts regarding issues within the disabled community in regular discussion. Textbook problems, he has come to realize, are alive in society today.

“A lot of times people, with visual disabilities are sort of seen by the sighted world as a totally helpless person, but that’s not true,” he argues.

Adams adds, “We learned that society tends to polarize nonsightedness. They think it’s black and white. They don’t realize that blindness is a spectrum.”

According to Professor Rod Michalko of the University of Toronto, 97 percent of people with visual impairment can still see. A person is defined as legally blind if he or she cannot recognize the biggest E on an eye chart from 20 feet away.  In this manner, not passing the test really can change a person’s life, as nonsighted individuals undergo such marginalization. One function of Goalball is to address this social stigma head-on. By including input from the entire sight spectrum, participants in the class gain thought-provoking perspectives.

“I feel like it’s the nonsighted students who are teaching the class,” Adams says. “They teach the class by the way they relate to the text.”

Sundly agrees. Input from his nonsighted classmates has challenged his preconceptions and inspired him.

“You build more respect of what (nonsighted people) have to go through on a daily basis, (and) what society is doing is being too judgmental. You learn in playing Goalball that we are all human beings and that we are always equal.”

The feeling of equality is echoed by almost everyone. Kwong says, “I feel like the No. 1 thing I appreciate is everyone is on an equal playing field. I can participate in the same activity with the same ability. Instead focusing on “the strongest” or “the fastest,” goal ball (emphasizes) skills, practice and teamwork – which is a new way to think about sports.”

Sundly’s team blocking a shot

This is not to say that Goalball is not physically demanding. Nonsighted senior Erik Elveback warns against the misconception that Goalball is “easy.” Teammates must coordinate movements through foot-tapping to prevent players from going out of bounds or wandering off the court.

“This sport is very difficult for everybody that plays because for most students, they have never used hearing as the main method of playing a sport,” Adams explains.

Winning off and on the court

Sundly translates skills from Goalball into new techniques to improve his soccer performance. As a midfielder, he lists blocking farther and throwing harder as valuable interdisciplinary lessons Goalball has taught him. Because the ball used in Goalball is heavier than a soccer ball, Sundly has benefited from weight training in a completely unexpected manner. As for foot-tapping, Sundly points out that Goalball has taught him to position himself better on the soccer field as well as give clearer communication to teammates.

Soccer skills were not the only gifts players gained from Goalball. For Young, it is the scale of bonding that has been “mind-altering.” On the last day of practice, Goalball players celebrated with cheers and heartwarming hugs.

Newman points out that the camaraderie is a sign of the game’s success.

He explains, “What I really enjoyed about this class is how much they all liked Goalball. Every single one of them.”

“It creates new friendships that students hadn’t imagined before,” Adams expresses. “I think its true for everybody in the class.”

The future

For Grigorieff, Goalball is set to thrive. His far-reaching plans aim to help everybody involved.

Matt Grigorieff, the architect behind Goalball, with a player

“Some people are not included in sports, and that’s something we at UC Berkeley want to change,” he says. “I think Berkeley can lead the way to promote inclusion. Goalball is not only a class but could be a club team for the campus. One day, (it could) turn into a varsity sport with scholarships. We want inclusion at the highest level in varsity sports.”

In the fall semester, Goalball will be available for everyone to play. Many players this semester were so touched that they have indicated they are returning to grow a community.

“I love Goalball and I want to continue assisting it — I believe in the cause,” Adams says, firmly. Then, with a laugh, she admits: “Goalball is pretty tight.”

To see Goalball in action, check out the video here.

Image sources: Eric Craypo, courtesy.

Contact Alex Mabanta at amabanta@dailycal.org.

The post Introducing Goalball, Cal’s most inclusive sport appeared first on The Daily Californian.