From Russia, (and U.Va.), with books

Written in another language on another continent almost two centuries ago, the story led to a discussion about contemporary relationships.

"I've never really called anybody a friend," said a young man, his elbows on the table, fists resting against his chin in a pose that displayed the tattooed words "Life" on one forearm and "Death" on the other.

"I feel close to some people in here, but I just don't really call'em a friend," he said.

Of all the names that have echoed off the walls of the Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center over the decades, those of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky are among the least likely.

Beaumont, since 1918 the home for some of the state's most dangerous youths, this year hosted a University of Virginia Russian literature class attended by 14 U.Va. students and 21 high- and medium-security offenders.

The classic 19th-century stories served as vehicles for conversation about contemporary issues for two groups of students who at first glance appear to be peers in age only, said Andrew Kaufman, the instructor.

"Even though the common ground here is the discussion about literature, what makes the conversation so interesting is that they're really conversations about life," Kaufman said. "I think they're discovering that great literature can be, and is, relevant, personally, to an unusually wide range of people."

Surrounded by tall fences topped with razor wire, Beaumont sits in a pastoral stretch of Powhatan County overlooking the James River.

Every Thursday, Kaufman and his students — most of them women — passed through chain-link gates and reinforced, electrically operated security doors to get to the classroom in a counseling center.

The visitors arrived with ballpoint pens and spiral notebooks. Staff members supplied the residents with stubby golf pencils and bound composition books because pens and wire bindings can be fashioned into weapons.

They sat at tables mixed with the male Beaumont residents who wear polo shirts embroidered with "DJJ," for Department of Juvenile Justice. Scars, jailhouse tattoos and other signs of short, troubled lives also set the residents apart.

Michael S. Ito, superintendent of the 250-person facility for males up to age 20, said Beaumont's residents are there because of the seriousness of their crimes or their inability to avoid trouble in their home communities.

Ito is an enthusiastic supporter of the class. "Our students are very excited about it. I think it's a great motivator," he said.

So, too, are Kaufman's students.

"They now see that they have a responsibility not just to me, not just to themselves or their grades, but to this community of youth that they're working with," Kaufman said. "I have not had a student miss a class all semester."

He said they arrived prepared. "This is no longer just about them. It's about their responsibility, their sense of duty to these residents who they don't want to let down. These are kids who have been let down in their lives, and my students realize that they don't want to be a part of that pattern."

Kaufman, a lecturer and academic community engagement faculty fellow at U.Va., said he had long thought about ways to make the humanities more relevant. He decided to get involved with high-risk youths several years ago after giving a talk to inmates at the Virginia Beach Correctional Center about "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" by Tolstoy.

"That was an incredibly powerful experience, not just for the inmates but for me because I had read that story, I had studied it, I had written about it many times before, but there's something about being in that unfamiliar environment, talking to people who come from very different backgrounds from me that allowed me to see things in Tolstoy that I hadn't seen before and to appreciate that story in a way that I hadn't fully appreciated it."

"What I wanted to do is to create a similar experience for my students," Kaufman said.

The university funded the course, called Books Behind Bars: Life, Literature and Community Leadership, in 2009. A pilot program was conducted last year at the Jefferson Trail Treatment Center for Children in Charlottesville.

The course, also a pilot, started in January for the U.Va. students. They spent five sessions on Russian literature, the juvenile-justice system and how they could build a relationship with the Beaumont residents they were to meet in February.

The intent wasn't for the college students to be therapists or teachers, but friends and mentors.

Bayly Buck, a senior from Chevy Chase, Md., said she and the students were extremely curious about Beaumont.

"We spent a lot of time sort of trying to fill in the gaps about what we didn't know and, of course, ended up being completely surprised when we got there — it was nothing like we thought it was going to be," she said.

"These men genuinely wanted to take part in these discussions and they wanted to learn from us and I think they wanted us to learn from them," Buck said.

An assignment for a class this month was the story "Princess Mary," one of several short stories in Mikhail Lermontov's 1839 work, "A Hero of Our Time," in which a protagonist is a manipulative womanizer.

Buck's discussion table included four U.Va. students and three from Beaumont. She asked each to "free write" for a few minutes about courage and love, two themes in "Princess Mary." She explained later that the idea behind the exercise was to find ways to link the story with daily life. The writing done, each person at the table talked about what they had written.

Claire Henry, a U.Va. student, said she had broken her back in high school and the recovery took months. Now, she told the group, "I worry a lot about the future." Henry said she finds it difficult to stand for long periods and is concerned about her ability to have children.

Courage, she said, is sometimes needed in small, regular doses: "Little things that you do on a day-to-day basis."

One young man held at Beaumont for the past 16 months said he was in love once but was hurt when he discovered that during a prior incarceration his girlfriend had been unfaithful.

That prompted U.Va. student Joyner Jones to say, "That really tells me love is trusting somebody. It's hard to trust people when you've been hurt. … It's very courageous to take a chance." Jones said she believes the two topics, love and courage, are related.

Henry was curious if anyone felt bad for the princess, who was victimized by the womanizer. "Or, do you think she should have known?" she asked.

"She should have known," said the Beaumont resident, whose name, along with the others, was not given because of juvenile-justice policy. He said the princess turned down a man who was in love with her in favor of the cad. "I was sad for her, and then I wasn't," he said.

On the other hand, Henry said, the womanizer did not want the princess until she left his life.

"You ever been in one of those awful make-up/break-up relationships?" asked Henry.

"Nah," said another Beaumont resident.

"That's good, stay away from those," she chuckled.

Later in the class, the same Beaumont resident asked the U.Va. students what they were expecting. He admitted, "I thought you all were going to be, like, stuck up … arrogant."

The women thought that was a fair expectation. "Your first meeting decides whether you believe those preconceived notions or you reject those preconceived notions," Buck said.

As for their expectations about the Beaumont residents, Buck said, "we really had no idea." The young women said that once at Beaumont they were pleasantly surprised. "We didn't know you all were going to be so polite," Jones said.

All four women said the residents were far less superficial and more respectful to them than many male U.Va. students.

The discussion wandered, touching back and forth on the Russian story as the youths talked about their parents and siblings. Henry complained that as she grew older, she realized her mother was right about more things.

"If you have a certain relationship with your father, it will color all the other relationships with other men in your life," Buck said. My dad was awesome, my dad was a big hero. … I'll never find someone as great as my dad, which is a different kind of problem."

After an hour and 15 minutes, Kaufman wrapped things up. The Beaumont residents, accompanied by staff, left the counseling center. The U.Va. students remained for an additional 50 minutes for debriefing.

The last class this semester was Thursday. Kaufman and Ito want it to continue and to make it available to as many students and residents as possible.

"The U.Va. students have learned how simple interactions with teenagers can have such an impact on creating optimism in their future and how they themselves can learn from high-risk youths on how to make better decisions about their own lives," Ito said.

Buck, who is studying psychology and history, said the Beaumont youths come from unfortunate, even toxic, backgrounds. Still, she said, they show optimism.

"They have such interesting personalities and they shared with us openly about their lives at Beaumont and even outside of Beaumont. They all are just so full of life and hopes," Buck said.

"They see themselves beyond the walls of the detention center," she said. "It just shows me how easy it is for young persons to make the wrong decisions when they're put in a bad environment."

Buck is now considering working with troubled youths, perhaps assisting released offenders to help younger brothers, sisters or neighbors make good decisions.

She was uncertain how to classify the relationships she and her classmates have established at Beaumont. "They really did sort of become like friends. I'm not really sure. We still haven't exactly pegged who we are to them," she said.

For the young man who opened up to the students about his lost love, the future is uncertain as to whether he'll return to his family, a halfway house or some other program — much less college.

He has a GED and would like to become an electrician. He said he loved the Russian literature class and getting to know people he would likely have never met on the outside.

But, he said, "if I go to college, I don't know what I'm going to go for. I'd like to, but it's not a high priority."

College work is doable at Beaumont, he said. "On the street, it'd be different."

fgreen@timesdispatch.com

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