Tunnel of Oppression demonstrates the power of labels

Fabienne Fleurantin/Staff Writer

 

Photos provided by Fabienne Fleurantin

 

Take a moment and think about your gracious mother. Perhaps she is a hardworking woman, who comes home to greet you, exchanging words about her day then asking about yours. She gives you the letter she received in the mail and asks you to read it because she’s still learning English. You open it and are forced to tell her that she will be deported, effective immediately. There is no way for her to stay with you.

I don’t know what that’s like. But on Thursday, April 7, I got to witness this in BBC’s Tunnel of Oppression.

BBC Campus Life hosted this event in the WUC Ballrooms with one goal in mind: to change the perspectives of those who enter.

The whole concept for the Tunnel of Oppression began at Missouri State University, and other universities around the country started to implement this on their campuses, like FIU.

The Tunnel of Oppression is “an interactive campus-wide diversity program in which actors are put on scenarios for participants to experience. These scenarios cover different types of diversity and social justice,” as mentioned on the Missouri State Tunnel of Oppression Facebook page.

From the moment I signed in, I was automatically given a label to stick to my chest that read “douchebag” and a bottle of water, which I will explain the purpose of later. A group of other students and I were led through a series of rooms in complete darkness, where the only light that shined was from our tour guide’s flashlight. With caution, the tour guide steered us through a series of rooms where we sat down and watched a video showing images of different people from various backgrounds and the experiences they were confronted with.

We ambled through a room where images of unattainable and unrealistic beauty standards were plastered on every wall, then, we witnessed the faces of those who were affected by it.

In the next room, my group and I gathered around a homeless woman, who was sitting in a desk with her head down. We learned how prominent homelessness in colleges are and how it occurs.

We stood together quietly as we read statistics detailing the amount of sexual assaults that plague individuals of every race, gender and sexual orientation.

Remember that bottle of water I mentioned earlier? We were asked to drink it and in exchange, it was replaced by unsanitary and unfiltered water to represent the reality of those who were affected by the contaminated water in Flint, Michigan.

For that moment in time, I got to experience someone else’s truth. The Tunnel of Oppression has shown someone else’s sentiments, their anguish, their pain, their experience – and it was impactful.  

I was labeled a “douchebag” when I began this journey. It led me to believe that I actually was one because there was someone in our group who was drunk- I later found out they were an actor- but I didn’t help them.

I kept wondering if I should’ve done something, but was unsure of what I could do. This one word made its way into my thoughts and then translated into my actions. I realized the power of words and how they grasp people. The weight of a word cannot be measured.

Words can be idly spoken with blatant disregard of impact on another individual. You may not see their effect on the surface, but underneath, that person who was bruised by your insults may be tearing themselves apart inside.

Words, images and stereotypes have a long lasting effect and a steady stream of affronts could vex a person’s life forever. This is what the Tunnel of Oppression has proven to me.

 

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