Rod Dreher alerts us to a fresh try by some campus’s around the country to increase awareness of the debilitating effect of prejudice: The Tunnel of Oppression. From UNC-Chapel Hill’s 2011 Tunnel of Oppression page :
The Tunnel of Oppression is a tour that will engage students in an immersive experience of scenes where participants will experience first hand different forms of oppression through interactive acting, viewing monologues, and multimedia. Participants directly experience the following scenes of oppression: ability, class, body image, immigration, homophobia, genocide, religious oppression, relationship violence, and race. All of the scenes have been written with the Chapel Hill students in mind. Some scenes are direct monologues from student experiences on campus, others deal with local hot topics, including a local immigration issue that has been a major story in the news and the student newspaper. At the completion of the Tunnel experience participants will go through an active 30 minute processing session where they will discuss the experience and learn how they can “rethink their role” in creating positive social change.
What is meant be “processing” is not clear, but those in most need of conversion to sensitivity are probably the least likely to find themselves in the Tunnel of Oppression.
