Musab Chummun - Class of 2023
Not many of us would have spent an entire semester of our first year in college giving back to others – we’d have been too focused on our own experience and the fun of freshman year. But not Musab Chummun (’23). For Musab, his gaze is always outward.
As a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, Musab resurrected a prison education program that died in Covid aimed to prepare incarcerated individuals for reentry. Musab, along with two Penn Debate Teammates, made the 90-minute roundtrip to SCI Chester, a rural medium-security prison in Pennyslvania, to run a weekly workshop on argumentation, problem solving, public speaking, and other topics to educate a group of 30 men ranging from 28 to 60 years of age. By empowering the individuals to think beyond the walls of the prison, Musab and his co-instructors gave the inmates back some of their agency. The culminating project for the course was a test of all the skills learned in the 6-week course, a debate: SCI Chester Inmates vs. UPenn Debate Society. As a follow up, Musab is working on obtaining a media release for the recording of the debate to shed a light on this program in hopes of channeling funding for education programs at the prison, and he has recently been contacted by ABC News for coverage of the story.
In reflecting on his experience as an educator at the prison, Musab notes “It was clear that [the inmates] had exponentially more to offer me than I could have ever taught [them],” adding that the course helped him see the humans behind the prison system. “The process [of running the course] was humbling,” says Musab, “We drive past prisons and don’t think twice about them or the individuals inside their walls.” As a result, Musab is currently working to help promote a petition written by one inmate to change Pennsylvania’s sentencing laws and is running the course again now, with plans to offer the program each semester until he graduates.
In between these spring and fall inmate education courses, Musab has been busy working as the summer Legislative Intern for Pramila Jayapal’s congressional office in DC. A central focus of Musab’s internship was policy, and he spent countless hours in congressional sessions taking notes and writing policy letters and briefs to advise Jayapal. One notable policy was the Equal Remedies Act which was promoted by an Oregon congresswoman to limit statutory caps for punitive damages cases, paving the way for individuals seeking lawsuits to sue for amounts commensurate with the damages and pain they experienced. Change, as it turns out, can happen – one act at a time.
Musab learned a lot this summer in DC. In true Musab form – a chatty, inquisitive, deeply curious and compassionate student during his time at Overlake – he chatted up all the folks in Jayapal’s office, squeezing out every ounce of learning. Musab learned that “Politics, in itself, is a means toward organizing power and control to benefit a specific issue.” Musab hopes to build a career out of maximizing power within a space – a business, a nonprofit, etc. – and then channelling that power into politics. So perhaps, one day, Musab might just have a summer Legislative Intern of his own. In the meantime, stay tuned as you watch for Musab to compete in the World Universities Debating Championship this December.