A simulation of oppression brought a more personal experience to students in hopes of helping them become more accepting of differences.
The L.A. Pittenger Student Center Ballroom contained five stations, each focused on a different topic Wednesday night. The topics of Unity Week’s event Great Expectations included gender, sexual oppression, religion, mental and physical disabilities and race.
“[Students], maybe in different ways, don’t understand what it is to be oppressed,” said Kate Link, the graduate student overseeing the event. “For example, if you are straight, you probably cannot empathize with someone who is [LGBTQ] because you have never experienced that type of oppression.”
Students in groups of about eight participated in an activity for each topic, followed by discussion.
“We want people to be involved, and we don’t want people to be bored because people have been lectured at all day in classes,” said Alec Portinga, a sophomore Japanese and telecommunications major. “At first, they are going to be frustrated about what’s going on but I feel like after the debrief at the end people will be more aware.”
For the gender station, participants were put into groups based on color: one group could talk, one group could write and one couldn’t communicate at all. They were then told to build a marshmallow and toothpick tower. The differences in communication represented the differences in interaction and power with males, females and transgendered people.
The sexual oppression activity gave each group member a colored paper flower, and there were different coming out stories for each color that the members talked through. For each negative experience, the student with that color folded back a petal.
A small obstacle course was set up for the religion obstacle. Participants had to answer questions, and weight was added to their backpack for each incorrect answer.
For the awareness of mental and physical disability group, each member was either given a blindfold to represent being blind, earplugs to represent being deaf, a chair to represent using a wheelchair or had someone talking in their ear to represent having attention deficit disorder. They were then asked to play simon says.
At the race-focused table, the leader started by treating white Americans specially, with them representing the majority. The majority was then decided differently, like based on eye color, and they were treated better. This showed the students how it felt to be treated differently.
Senior social work major Lea Fortier was in charge of the gender activity, and she said she thought it went well.
“I wanted to keep it simple for people who might be new to multicultural diversity topics.” Fortier said. “I learn through activities, so I like experiential activities. Some go deeper, some don’t go as deep, it just depends on how much your population already knows.”
Chris Taylor, a sophomore public relations and Black Student Association treasurer, said he enjoyed listening to what others contributed to the discussion after the activity.
“It’s really informative, and it’s an opportunity to understand different perspectives through activities that are a little bit less serious, but you can still get a lot from them.” Taylor said. “This is obviously more intimate, [because] there are a lot less people here.”
Link said students who are looking to learn more about variances between people can attend meetings of different diversity groups on campus, like those she called the “Big Four”: Asian American Association, Black Student Association, Latino Student Union and Spectrum.
“Everywhere you are going to walk into someone that is different than you, students need to learn to function in a society where everyone is different,” Link said. “Not only do we want to unify but help students learn to look for differences and find beauty in those differences.
Chris Stephens contributed to this story.
