Politically Correct “Tunnel of Oppression” Coming to Marquette

The bureaucrats at Marquette seem to be planning a spring full of politically correct indoctrination.

Here is an e-mail we got today:

Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:40:12 -0600
Subject: You’re Invited...
From: Kate Kusiak
Thread-Topic: You’re Invited...

. . . to be a part of Remove the Blindfold, a new program coming to Marquette this April!

What Is Remove the Blindfold?

Remove the Blindfold is modeled after a well-known event called Tunnel of Oppression, which is organized on a number of college campuses across the country. It allows participants the opportunity to explore various forms of oppression and discrimination including racism, heterosexism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and ageism. The Tunnel of Oppression is intended to be eye-opening and conscious building [sic] and is targeted at those students who have rarely experienced difference. The rationale is that students are unable to fully understand oppression and discrimination until they have experienced it first-hand. The experience should stimulate thoughts, feelings, and emotions around the issues and images presented.

Who Is Sponsoring Remove the Blindfold?

It is a collaboration between Residence Life and Intercultural Programs.

Who Can Participate?

We are inviting all student organizations to be a part of this important program.

What Does Participation Involve?

Student organizations that want to be a part of Remove the Blindfold will create displays representing the form of oppression or discrimination they choose.

Here is a list of potential ideas for a display:

Hurricane Katrina
Homelessness
Body Image
Sexual Assault
Racial/Ethnic/Religious Oppression
Sexual Orientation
Ability
Educational Opportunity
Faith/Religion
Holocaust
Women’s Issues/Gender
Global Oppression/Awareness

When Is It?

It will take place from April 15 – April 20, 2007.

How Does My Organization Volunteer to Participate?

If your organization would like to be a part of Remove the Blindfold, please reply to this email and we will get in touch with you. Or, if you would simply like additional information, please reply to this email and we’ll answer any questions you have.

We look forward to working with you!

Carla Cadet, Cobeen Hall Director
Dannie Moore, Abbottsford Hall Director
Ed Gricius, O’Donnel Hall Director
Pamela Peters, Assistant Dean for Intercultural Programs
Meredith Galloway, Graduate Assistant for Intercultural Programs

Note the elitist assumption that Marquette students have “rarely experienced difference,” need their “eyes opened” and their “conscious” [sic] built.

(We perhaps should not blame these people for the use of “conscious” for “conscience” or “consciousness.” That text was in fact plagiarized from a web page at the University of Maryland.)

Of course, people who mount events like this are hardly “tolerant of difference.”

In their world, there are few if any legitimate political differences. There is only “racism, heterosexism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and ageism.” Banish those things and political conflict will melt away in a society of equality for all. Except for those evil heterosexual white males, who should feel eternally guilty for being oppressors.

Marquette is hardly on the cutting edge in this. It’s become a standard project of the usual suspects at many universities.

An excellent critique can be found on the Critical Mass blog.

Ball State joins a growing list of schools that have staged their own interactive tunnel visions of “hate” (defined in terms of the usual -phobias and -isms). Some of the more ambitious Tunnels of Oppression have been put on at Arizona, where tunnel-goers were cast as Jews in a Nazi gas chamber (some were cast as gay Jews); Maryland, where false sexual assault statistics were presented as true and where white students were handcuffed to a wall to simulate the experience of slavery; and Regis University, which also disseminated false sexual assualt numbers and where tunnel-goers confronted their “ableism” by trying to do tasks while blindfolded or while sitting in a wheelchair.

The Tunnel of Oppression is a good example of what passes for enlightenment on today’s campuses. It is not about disseminating information (not about disseminating true information anyway), or about providing historical context for understanding the conflicts that define our age, but about oversimplifying those conflicts through a disingenuous appeal to our emotions. The Tunnel of Oppression -- which proudly casts itself as a “sensory experience” -- encourages students not to think rationally about what ails the world, or to inform themselves by learning facts and studying context, or even to take reasoned, principled action against injustice, but to react viscerally to images of violence, to become hysterical on cue.

Of course, if the people organizing this really wanted to showcase all aspects of oppression (rather than push a leftist agenda) they might include displays on:

• “The Da Vinci Code” as an example of anti-Catholic bigotry
• Muslim anti-Semitism
• Two-thirds of black babies are born out of wedlock, with terrible consequences for their life chances
• Free speech censored on college campuses across the nation
• White student kicked out of Urban Journalism Workshop because of her race
• Marquette scholarships are discriminatory on the basis of race and gender
• Duke University Lacrosse players prosecuted in bogus rape case
• School chorus forced to limit religious songs
• Anti-military bigotry in San Francisco

Somehow, we don’t think that any of these forms of oppression will interest the folks doing Remove the Blindfold.