Position Statement on
the Tunnel of Oppression

January, 2004

After experiencing the Tunnel of Oppression we remain firm in our belief that this program, and others like it do not fit the Beyond Compliance (BCCC) agenda for diversity programming. Our vision of disability education includes programs and events with three tiers of goals. All programs should, at least, meet the first goal. We strive to meet the others as well.

Goal 1: Programs are centered on real lived experiences.

Goal 2: Programs challenge the participant to examine their own behavior within appropriate social constructs.

Goal 3: Programs ultimately move the participant to act to break down stereotypes and barriers between people.

The Tunnel of Oppression does not meet any of our goals. Let’s look at the Tunnel goal by goal.

Goal 1: Programs are centered on the real lived experiences (of individuals with disabilities or the characteristics being represented.)

The scenes presented in the Tunnel all depicted events that do happen. However, they were not based on specific true instances – they all dealt in simplified and stereotyped representations of situations. This combined with the level of theatricality employed to create a visceral response made the scenes appear overly dramatic and harder to believe. It created a process of othering in which it was difficult to identify with any of the characters in the scenes. In fact, students we spoke with stated that the tunnel felt unreal and that they did not believe the scenes represented happened. We will address three instances individually:

The representations of disability (learning disability and visual impairment) and linguistic minority that were presented during the instructions phase of the Tunnel were not based in real experiences of people with disabilities. Dyslexia, other print-based learning disabilities, and low vision are manifest in ways that cannot be captured by an able reader’s inability to read a short set of instructions. Dyslexia is more than reversed letters or “words jumping around on the page.” The inability to read a three paragraph page does not touch on the feelings of a person who has struggled to access the print-based world for an entire life time and come up with a life-time’s worth of coping mechanisms. It only minimizes the importance of the disability in the individual’s life. This falls into the category of simulation.

The scene from “The Accused” portraying a gang rape on a pinball machine was a horribly violent representation of rape that no one could help but have a visceral reaction to. Watching this scene did not inform anyone’s knowledge of how to deal with rape including date rape, how to help a friend, how to prevent rape, or how to address a culture in which this happens. Furthermore this did not represent the more common experience of date rape. Sexual coercion is often subtle, slowly undermining the individual’s determination to set boundaries. This portrayal made it difficult to identify with either victim or perpetrator even if one may (as may be likely) have experience with sexual coercion. It would be easy for a person to deny how they may participate in rape culture because they have not participated in gang rape, and it may be difficult for a victim of date rape to feel justified or supported since her rape experience was not so clear cut. We might add that The Accused is a good movie that addresses how victims and others may speak back to rape and be an agent for change. This message was lacking in this out-of-context scene. In fact, lack of context caused it to be comprable to a pornographic rape scene.

Much like the rape scene, the body image scenes did not allow space for a person to have difficulties with body image and self-esteem without it being escalated to the level of bulimia or steroid use. Eating disorders are often not about body image but more complex issues of control. Again, presenting only the extreme made it easy to deny the more common and no less important experiences.

We feel that these scenes were not based on specific real lived experiences. As stated before, the sensationalism and theatricality harmed rather helped people’s understanding. The black lights and strobe lights do not facilitate understanding of oppression. These theatrical tools manipulate the participant to experience a more powerful emotional response. This does not translate into meaningful content; instead it serves to trivialize the experience. The scenes were simplified and artificially separated into specific issues (ex: male body image, religious prejudice, LGBT students); this compartmentalization of the Tunnel hindered the understanding of the complexity and intersection between identity categories. A final objection to these simplified representations is that they left out the positive side of identities, the pride in the diverse cultures or representations of how individuals can be agents for change rather than victim. There is always hope, even in instances of bulimia, rape, racism, etc. We felt these scenes effectively removed the hope from these situations to isolate it and present it as something separate in the “Room of Hope.”

Goal 2: Programs challenge the participant to examine their own behavior within appropriate social constructs.

The organizers of the Tunnel of Oppression have emphasized the debriefing session as an important part of contextualizing the program. We felt that the debriefing does not lead students to examine their own behavior and how they may be participating in the oppression of others. The discussion that one of our participants witnessed maintained that oppression was viewed as something that happens to other people by other people. There was no discussion of social and cultural constructs that permit oppression. Because students were directly instructed not to take action, not to touch or interact with the actors, they were confined to the role of voyeur. This allows the student to see the characters represented as other than them. The “othering” was clearly seen in the small group discussion, there was no ownership of being part of this culture.

Goal 3: Programs ultimately move and enable the participant to act to break down stereotypes and barriers between people.

Students were asked, during the debriefing, “What is your responsibility in addressing these issues?” The response was to work one on one to educate people. Though well intentioned, there was no discussion of specifically how to do this, students were not asked for their commitment to a specific action, nor was there any concrete discussion of what this education might look like. There was nothing that would lead an observer to believe that the Tunnel of Oppression served as an effective call to action.

Additional Comments:

The Tunnel is a haunted house of victims. The perpetrators of the violence were, in many cases, invisible. The ones who were present could easily be seen as individual jerks. We do not feel that the Tunnel made a clear link between the violent and sad scenes it portrayed and the larger issues of power and oppression.

A program’s popularity should not be equated with effectiveness. The fact that it is powerful does not make it educational. A visceral response is not necessarily a valuable one. In fact, some emotions may actually impair one’s ability to think rationally, observe critically, and analyze experiences.

We must lament the fact that this program was embarrassingly inaccessible to people with disabilities, especially visual or hearing impairments. In this way it embraced and supported the oppression it was attempting to combat.

Recommendations:

We have seen (and created) programs on campus that represent diversity in ways we support. Guest speakers, like Judy Shepard, theatrical presentations like The Vagina Monologues and The Laramie Project, film presentations like our Disability in Film series and a similar LGBT series this Spring, and discussion based programs like Talk to Me to Get to Know Me all lead to students having a real understanding of diverse cultures. We support more programs, like these, that meet our programming goals. In addition, for further information we have attached an excerpt from the Anti-Defamation League’s philosophical framework on effective diversity programming.

We believe the Tunnel of Oppression is potentially harmful in its simplifications of oppression. This program was not solution based. We cannot support this program, or others like it, happening at Syracuse University. We have worked hard to try and present clearly both our objections and goals. We hope our thoughts will be received in the spirit of constructive criticism and feedback. We are happy to work with organizations in the future to create programming.