An associate professor of English at the University of Utah, Clarke, 47, is also the originator and guiding force of an unusual two-year-old college credit program for inmates. Last December Clarke proudly officiated at the first graduation ceremony held in the prison chapel.
"On behalf of the class of 1975, I want to pay special tribute to a special lady, Dr. Lori Clarke," said Robert Mullen, as he began his valedictory speech. "We'd like to thank her for showing us a better way of life." The professor had tears in her eyes. Mullen, 31, serving a 10-year-to-life term for murder, was speaking for a graduating class of two. He and Gerard Squires, 29 (five to 20 years for attempted rape), received bachelor of arts degrees in psychology from the University of Utah. The program is funded by the State Office of Vocational Rehabilitation and the U.S. Veterans Administration.
Warden Samuel Smith, Gov. Calvin L. Rampton and university president David P. Gardner attended the graduation. "I've seen a lot of other ideas peter out," the warden said, "but Lori Clarke has the gift and ability to excite people. I don't know how she got the state and university to do it, but she did, and we're grateful."
The program began with eight students and now has four times that number enrolled in German, social psychology, intellectual traditions of the West, English composition, film studies and contemporary social theory. The classes are taught by university faculty members and held in a makeshift classroom in the medium-security section of the prison. "I've never heard an obscene or off-color remark in two years," says Professor Clarke. "Oh, there're usually a few whistles, but that just shows they're alive."
The former nun joined the Utah faculty in 1970. "I believe you're being true to yourself by using your talents to the fullest extent, and I didn't feel I was doing that," she says. She had entered the Milwaukee convent of the School Sisters of St. Francis at 13 and as Sister Consuelo had taught in elementary and high schools in the Midwest. She left the order in 1967 with the Church's permission after six years of "battling with myself." "I wanted to make sure I wasn't offending God."
Today Clarke is a campus dynamo. In addition to her teaching, she is president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors. She lives in a high-rise condominium overlooking Salt Lake Valley, and on weekends, and summers when she is not traveling abroad, she retreats to a cabin in Logan Canyon, a resort area 100 miles away. Since leaving the order, she has led an active social life and currently is dating four men. "I'd like to get married, but there's no compulsion about it," she says. "I'd never marry a man until I'd lived with him at least a year—to make sure we'd enjoy a meaningful, lasting relationship."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
