 "Photo: Photo by Adam Jungwirth")
The primary goal of the Tunnel of Oppression, according to event coordinator Alicia Knipp, was to educate people about negative behaviors such as racism and sexism that create a “power imbalance” among groups.
“It’s my goal to educate,” Knipp, a senior at UW-Oshkosh, said. “It’s to show oppressive deeds happen here and all around the world. It’s common, and it’s important to stop it.”
Oppressive behaviors are often abstract and buried in people’s subconscious thoughts, and behaviors can be so ingrained, they’re difficult to break, but Peter Herr, co-president of the Hmong Student Union and an Oshkosh senior, held out hope for diversity to become the norm.
“If we start this slow mixing, you’ll have this nice salad at the end, all the groups mixing together,” Herr said.
Yet before this mixing can happen, people must be aware of the problem so they can be part of the solution.
“The more people that are educated, the more that take action, the better the world will be,” Knipp said.
Despite those lofty goals, Knipp was worried she might sound corny. The Tunnel of Oppression was anything but.
The exhibit, a five-room multimedia affair in Reeve Ballroom was planned and executed by members of several student groups, finished its third year at UW-Oshkosh on Tuesday evening.
As tour guides led them through the rooms, students and members of the campus community learned that oppression can be personal as well as powerful.
First up was the racism room, sponsored by the Multicultural Education Center, where MEC student volunteers exposed tour-goers to the poor treatment minorities can receive based on racial stereotypes.
As tour-goers looked for assigned items in a store scenario, MEC volunteers pulled them aside, asked probing questions, patted them down, or even accused them of stealing.
The poor treatment of minority shoppers, which is sometimes referred to as “shopping while black,” can go by many names. This is quite common, which motivated MEC students to demonstrate this form of prejudice.
“We just wanted to show the public that even little day-to-day activities that are easy for non-multicultural students are sometimes difficult and stressful for multicultural students,” Angeles Sanchez, a MEC member and an Oshkosh junior, said.
Many student volunteers shared stories about the difficulties of finding products that reflected their ethnicity, as well as racist treatment they received in stores.
Sanchez recalled how a member of the MEC was shopping with her mother for blinds and was ignored by a clerk who refused to acknowledge the shoppers.
MEC member and Oshkosh sophomore Minerva Salas spoke of two people she helped out at a store who had a shopping list but couldn’t find what they were looking for, partially because they weren’t fluent English speakers.
“I could see they would show the helpers at the store what they were looking for and they [the helpers] didn’t seem to take the time to even look at the list,” Salas said.
Salas often helps people at stores who can’t speak English very well, because she used to face the same struggle.
Multicultural students who were born in America and have been English-speakers their whole lives are just as susceptible to this treatment.
“I was a kid when I experienced that for the first time, looking at comic books,” Herr said, describing an experience with a female clerk who kicked him and a friend out of a store.
“She just said, ‘You—just leave,’” Herr said.
Herr created the posters and other media for this year’s exhibit and has been involved with the Tunnel of Oppression since its first year. Sadly, its message is as necessary and relevant today as it was two years ago.
“It should have been this one-time thing, but oppression never stops,” Herr said. “The big picture is understanding everyone is a human being.”
Examples of dehumanizing language were displayed on a wall of the racism room, racial epithets such as “rag head” and “porch monkey,” with explanations why they shouldn’t be used.
Just beyond this wall was the heterosexism room, sponsored by student group Rainbow Alliance for H.O.P.E., where a student wearing a Steelers jersey asked for volunteers to erase a whiteboard filled with homophobic slurs such as “faggot” and “queer.”
No matter how hard the volunteer tried, the board would not erase. The slurs were written in permanent ink, mirroring the permanent damage these types of names can cause to non-heterosexuals.
There was also a short video, featuring Wanda Sykes, encouraging students not to say “that’s so gay,” when saying something like “that’s so stupid” would be inoffensive and much more appropriate.
The images and terms demonstrated in the Tunnel of Oppression could be quite disturbing, and tour-goers were allowed to leave if it became too much for them.
At the end of the heterosexism room, behind a partition, a motionless student covered with a bloody sheet symbolized the senseless murder of 15-year-old homosexual Lawrence “Larry” Fobes King at his high school in 2008.
In the socioeconomic room, two female students sat forlornly on the floor, wearing placards that illustrated the problems of homelessness and poverty among single mothers and even those who have worked their whole lives.
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