Boxes and Walls event tears down stereotypes
On Thursday, Feb. 7, Saint Mary’s hosted the first ever Boxes and Walls event, an interactive diversity program sponsored by the Office of Residence Life and the Wellness Center.
The program can best be described as a ‘haunted house’ type experience. Instead of encountering ghosts and goblins, each participant was led on a tour through four rooms where they were faced with various areas of diversity and oppression. The goal of the program was to educate on stereotypes while thinking outside the box in order to tear down the walls that life perspectives might have us in.
This year, there were four rooms. The first room offered different activities on a range of physical and learning disabilities, including maneuvering a wheelchair, reading paragraphs simulating dyslexia, and hands-on instruction in using a walking stick to get around campus from Kelsi Watters, current first-year student. A second room offered a star activity simulating the coming out process and acceptance levels one might encounter. The third room offered a first-hand experience in being a non-native language learner in the classroom. The fourth room brought awareness to the differing financial backgrounds of our student population.
Over 100 students went through the four rooms, and the event concluded with a brief conversation about the experience. Volunteers included 10 professional staff members and over 25 student volunteers as actors and tour guides. Thank you to all who volunteered their time and energy in creating this program. Look forward to the event again next year.
