These Utah State Prison inmates just graduated. Here’s what they say about their degrees.

Standing at the podium in her graduation gown, Cesia Ortiz pointed to the window behind her — where barbed wire fences and towering gates loomed.

It’s been her view at the Utah State Prison for the last 11 months as she has served time on a felony charge. She looked out at it often from the classroom here, determined to earn her high school diploma during her incarceration.

“I realized to be truly successful on the outside,” Ortiz said, “I had to graduate.”

She adjusted her commencement robes to cover her Corrections-issued jumpsuit and imagined the day soon when she won’t see those fences outside anymore. Ortiz, 30, is set to be released next month. She said she plans to use her new degree to help her kids with their homework.

On Monday, Ortiz was among 38 inmates — her classmates — who celebrated getting their high school diplomas in the first ceremony at the prison in Salt Lake City since it moved to this western wetland area last year from the dilapidated Draper facility. The past three years, too, the Utah Department of Corrections didn’t hold in-person commemorations because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The long-awaited day was full of pomp and circumstance and hope for second chances.

A sign in the back, made by the inmates who work in the prison’s printing department, read: “Congratulations graduates!” Officers paced the aisles, mostly as a precaution, as they also helped the students fix tassels that had flipped the wrong way over caps.

Family members filled the blue plastic chairs for a chance to congratulate their loved ones on the accomplishment; some of the graduates had been incarcerated since high school. Others dropped out early. A few parents cried when their student crossed the makeshift stage in the prison visitor center.

The inmates were also nervous, tapping their sneakers on the cement floors before their name was called and they collected their diploma from the program here called South Park Academy.

Graduate Jose Rios-Mojica teared up as he gave his speech, calling the celebration a “día especial” — or “special day” in his native Spanish — one he never thought he’d have an opportunity to see. At 56, he was the oldest of the class to graduate Monday. The youngest was 22.

“Maybe you don’t understand why I have this feeling,” he said. “It is not sadness, but it is joy.”

Rios-Mojica grew up in Mexico, where he said his family moved around often. He didn’t finish school beyond junior high. And then, he said, he got on a bad path. When he came to the United States, he didn’t speak English. He got involved in crime. He was arrested in 2020 and pleaded guilty to harming a child. He was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

He regrets the past, he said. Getting an education here, though, he added, has “given me an opportunity to be a better person.”

Rios-Mojica first started the high school program when he was at the Draper prison. He began asking for books and studied remotely when COVID-19 kept inmates isolated in their cells.

He helped his fellow classmates with their schoolwork and encouraged them to attend classes when they returned in person. To those now graduating with him, he said: “Society sees us different because we have this uniform,” pointing to his white jumpsuit. “But even though we are here in these walls, we can do a lot.”

Rios-Mojica is now enrolled in the prison’s higher education program to start classes through Salt Lake Community College in the fall.

With the obstacles from the prison moving locations and the pandemic, the graduating class was one of the smallest in recent years. But it marked resilience for the students who fought through those challenges and a starting point for Salt Lake City School District, which has taken over the program now at the new site, to grow the offerings there in the coming years.

The district currently has about 200 students participating in the prison’s high school diploma program.

Several of the teachers moved from Draper to the Salt Lake City prison for the academy. And many sat in the rows behind the inmates, passing around a box of tissues as they wiped away proud tears.

Chris Sullivan, the principal for South Park Academy, said at the ceremony: “It’s really inspiring to see how someone’s life can change” with education.

Of the graduates Monday, 25 were men and 13 were women. Sixteen participated in the ceremony, and 14 are repeat offenders. That includes Ortiz, this being her second time at the Utah State Prison. She believes getting her diploma will help her get a job when she’s released and stop her from returning here. She said it has motivated her.

That’s the point of the program, to help reduce recidivism and give those released from prison an easier transition back into society.

In her speech, Ortiz embraced that, quoting Oprah Winfrey, saying: “Honor your calling. Everyone has one.”

Other graduates read lines from Benjamin Franklin and adages about the glass being half full and the ball now being in their court. The typical graduation references, though, somehow rang truer here inside these brick walls.

“Even though I received my education in prison, I will make a difference outside of prison,” said Victoria Clown.

Clown, 33, was sentenced in 2020 to two consecutive terms of one to 15 years in prison after a person she was with fatally injured a man and they left together in the victim’s car. She said getting an education became her top priority for her time behind bars. She saw it as a way to atone for the past, while looking toward the future.

“We are not bad people,” she said. “We are just people who made mistakes.”

Before her incarceration, she didn’t graduate high school and tried to get a GED, but never finished. As a single mom raising three kids, she said, her schooling was always put on hold. When she says she never thought she would be here, she is not referring to her incarceration. She means getting her diploma.

When they announced her name on the microphone to accept her degree, she pumped her fist in front of the window, not looking at the fences but at the sky beyond them.