“Going in and out of the hospital, we’d pass Loyola’s campus. I used to point at the campus and say to my mother, ‘that’s gonna be my school one day.’”
These were the words of a Loyola student at Rayburn Correctional Facility on April 13, 2026, shared during a Loyola student visit to the facility for the student peace conference.
The Peace Conference is an annual spring event put on by Loyola’s Student Peace Initiative, which is led by President Isabella McCoy. The conference invites students to present their research related to the topic chosen for that year. This year’s theme was survival in peace and conflict.
Loyola has a program with the Rayburn Correctional Facility that enables students to earn their bachelor’s degree while incarcerated. This event included a couple of Loyola students incarcerated at Rayburn and one Loyola student from New Orleans presenting their findings to Loyola students as well as students who are enrolled in Northshore Technical Community College and Ashland University at Rayburn.
“Last year was the first time we invited students from Rayburn to submit work for the conference,” McCoy said. “One of our goals is to create space for those voices.”
One Rayburn student, a smiling man dressed in starched, cuffed jeans, spotless white shoes and socks, and a bright blue button-down shirt, said that he was inspired by Loyola student Mallory Philips’ presentation last year, and it made him want to do one of his own.
“I saw the joy in her face, and I knew I wanted to do it,” he said.
He took a 1930s history class at Loyola, which led to him discovering a collection of black and white Depression-era photographs of migrant workers from the Pontchatoula strawberry plantation.
For each photo, he chose a lesson that he felt could be learned from it. In one of a woman cooking over a makeshift stove, he added text to a slide that said “We have to learn to make ourselves at home.”
Other themes included “we have to look for the good”, as he believed the photographer, Russell Lee, did.
While running a mic around for audience questions after the presentation, another Rayburn student joked, “I don’t know how you trap so much emotional content in black and white photos from the 1930s.”
It was clear that the student presenting had quite a reputation for his positive attitude around Rayburn, according to his peers.
Terrance Parker, a sophomore studying Psychology and Black Studies at Loyola, gave a presentation on the survival tactics of students in Gaza during the conflict in the Middle East. Students in the audience nodded along, asking questions for Parker in the Q&A section following his presentation. During the mingling time following the presentations, one Loyola student, a pastor at the facility, came to discuss the topic with him further.
Another Loyola student at Rayburn noted of Gaza’s citizens, “I don’t know them, but I love them.”
Another student presented about an education course that taught him about transformative learning theory as well as the principles of growth mindsets, both topics that he critiqued and explored. The content of the class itself wasn’t what he found hope in; rather, it was Loyola’s program staff.
“I leaned on program staff to understand this sense of myself that had eluded me,” he said.
He also shared some of his creative writing related to living with a disability. The student frequently touched on this theme of feeling that as a wheelchair user, the world was not meant for him. Students in the audience shared similar experiences and how these affect their life as students. In the Q&A session following his presentation, McCoy noted that as someone with Type 1 diabetes, an “invisible handicap”, she understood his feelings of otherness.
Student Peace Initiative members frequently used the Q&A time as well as the social mingling time to connect with Rayburn students and ask questions.
