Go shock yourself into oppression awareness
Fear. Rage. Hatred. Misery. Despair. Pain.
Emotions weren’t just expressed in last week’s Tunnel of Oppres-sion at the Tula Community Center - they were experienced.
Shocking, horrifying and often brutal, the succession of images, sounds and skits mercilessly exposed participants to eye-opening perspectives on both their own lives and the lives of their peers.
A multitude of topics were addressed ranging from racism, sexism and abuse, to eating disorders, disabilities and poverty - and everything in between. Reactions varied between nervous giggling, tears and outbreaks of distress and disgust. Thankfully, the program coordinators had the foresight to set up a debriefing forum immediately afterward, allowing people to cool down from 30 minutes of exposure to the Tunnel’s raw emotion.
No one left without being emotionally affected.
During the debriefing and afterward, I heard expressions of wonder, amazement and shock. The Tunnel did more than bring modern issues into the harsh light of personal consciousness. We hear about these issues all the time, but when confronted with the stark reality of personally experiencing and witnessing them, it casts once-distant problems into painful proximity. Students departed with an intimate understanding of horrors they’d never seen before, many things they never would’ve experienced personally.
For example, I’ll never know what it’s like to be forced to sign up for the draft, knowing that our country has carelessly discarded the lives of unwilling soldiers in the past. I’ll never know the fear and anger of being confronted with the possibility that I might have to fight and die for a cause I don’t believe in. I’ll never know because I’m not male, and I don’t have to sign up for the military if I don’t want to.
But now, at least I can imagine it, and the resulting empathy and compassion makes me a more aware human being.
The most saddening aspect of the experience, however, was the downright amazement and surprise expressed by the exiting students. They simply didn’t know most of what was in that Tunnel even existed.
To me, that’s the greatest tragedy of all.
I realize - in that aspect - I am extremely lucky. I had the fortune to experience a program called Camp CLUE, a unique diversity retreat sponsored by my high school, when I was a sophomore.
Camp CLUE took all the issues the Tunnel addressed and expanded them into a four-day interactive experience. We weren’t told about the issues by a group of socially-conscious adults. Instead, we told our peers about our own experiences with oppression. The result was an intense, highly-personal revelation. I learned things about myself - and my classmates - that I’d never suspected before.
A boy I’d known for three years - the class clown, the joker - told us how one night, as he biked home from returning a video rental, he was stalked by an angry Ku Klux Klan member with a gun, and he had to huddle in terror in a stranger’s backyard until the bigot gave up. A girl, whom I’d never met before, sobbed as she described how two of her classmates raped her in her best friend’s house, and no one believed her when she reported the assault. Another girl told us how her brother died taking a bullet trying to protect her from a sudden drive-by shooting. These were people I knew. People I’d seen around for years, but never really talked to, and never imagined what they’d gone through in their lives.
The statistics from surveys of the CLUE group were shocking. There were roughly a hundred students, half were boys and half were girls. Ten girls had been raped, 24 were molested and all but three suffered verbal sexual harassment. Of the boys, 14 had used steroids and 35 had gotten drunk “to forget.”
Nine had contemplated suicide.
But, at the end of the weekend, the message was one of amazing hope. Sharing those burdens was an imense relief and learning about other people’s struggles was unexpectedly enlightening. Though I haven’t spoken to most of them since, I will never forget what they taught me.
The Tunnel was similar; more compact, but still effective - judging by people’s reactions. If every student had a similar awareness-raising experience, the world would be a better place.
Read the original column online here.
