Students in an experimental cinema class are nearing completion on their final project on the New York state prison system.

The students’ final project will take the form of a documentary — including video interviews, photography and a photo book — that explores how the policies and practices of prison management impact inmates and society at large.

The class they are in is called Cinema 380G: Experimental Collaboration Workshop in Digital Photography, and it is based on the ideas that a college course can be more about facilitating a group process than about imparting knowledge, and that art can be a collaborative process.

John Vetrano, a senior double-majoring in cinema and history and a student in the class, said recidivism was one of the major problems of the prison system, based on his experience with the project.

The problem of crime, he said, is “cycling back upon itself.” Vetrano said prisoners leaving prison do not simply start their lives where they left them.

“You basically have to start over,” he said.

He said that by focusing on punishment rather than rehabilitation, prisons contribute to a system that produces criminals rather than reforms them.

Xavia Bryan, another student in the class who is a senior double-majoring in cinema and economics, shared some statistics he learned in his research for the project.

“Two-thirds of people who are released from prison go back to prison in three years,” Bryan said.

Vetrano, Bryan and the other students in the class interviewed state legislators, the chaplain of Broome County Jail, ex-convicts as well as teenagers in the MacCormick Secure Center —a juvenile detention facility in Ithaca. They also incorporated information from their own academic research.

The students were the coordinators of their own project. Eight students traveled to Albany on March 16 to participate in Advocacy Day with the Drop the Rock Campaign. The campaign is an activist group that is asking to lower the penalties of, or eliminate, the Rockefeller drug laws, which takes a more aggressive stance on drug-related offenses.

Raymond Moore, a student in the class and senior double-majoring in cinema and English, was part of the team that traveled to Albany.

“We got more of an insight when we went up to Albany,” he said. “Being hands-on really opened up my eyes.”

Many of the interviews were conducted at the Emmanuel Baptist Church in Albany, where ex-convicts were present to share their stories.

The students are trying to get their project featured in a gallery on May 7 for First Friday, but the location has yet to be determined.

“It’s pretty rare even in North America to have a class like this,” said Benjamin Gerdes, the professor of the course. He said the course restructures the classroom as a process that is shared and collaborative.

Gerdes also said that the goal of the course was “not just documenting but trying to make visible a certain set of relationships,” he said, and “producing a public discourse around these issues.”

Due to budget cuts, the class will not exist next year. Gerdes said this has implications on the future of public higher education. He said that public education, unlike private education, can be “more connected to the surrounding community and state.”

Gerdes said that classes like his were new and innovative, and that students should “advocate and demand the kind of education they want.”

He was uncertain about the future of more experimental and experiential forms of learning.

“The real question is about the future of public higher education and what we can ask of it,” he said.