From the University of Kansas
Earlier this month, over a thousand students, faculty members, staff persons, and administrators toured the Tunnel of Oppression. Presented by the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Tunnel is an annual immersive experience of interactive exhibits. Participants engage with different forms of oppression associated with disabilities, economic class, body image, gender, gender expression, sexuality immigration, race and ethnicity. This year, in what is believed to be the first time, the Office of the Provost invited KU’s leadership team to participate in the tour as a group.
We left the tour with decisions to make as individuals and as KU leaders – do we stand idle and tolerate people being treated in a discriminatory manner? Or do we assert our leadership and purposefully act to create greater justice in our part of the world and beyond? We choose the latter and we need you to join us.
We can start by understanding the meaning of oppression for us, our neighbors, and communities. What the Tunnel makes clear is that oppression is violence…and violence takes many forms. In this tour, for example, we experienced brutality visited upon children by police officers; CEOs and government officials choosing to poison the water in low-income neighborhoods; unprovoked viciousness toward queer, trans and gender non-conforming communities; families lying dead together in the aftermath of war; inadequate governmental responses to natural disasters in places such as Florida, Texas, and Puerto Rico. While these multiple visual scenes of cruelty and subjugation were disturbing, equally difficult was the collective debriefing discussion that followed. You see, even University administrators struggle with how to understand and do justice work. But we will not shy away from the challenge.
Personally I blame evolution which is clearly going backwards.
4 comments:
Ah, I see what you did there! Anyone reading this pile of steaming bullshit from "The University of Kansas" would naturally assume that it was written by a small group of activist numpties in the Student Union, or somesuch. But then you click on the link and find the punchline: that it allegedly comes from the Provost's Office!
Well constructed, AKH!
(It is a joke, though, isn't it?)
"toward queer, trans and gender non-conforming communities;" reading that one would believe that there are whole towns full of these groups exclusively living their embattled lives outin fear, when in fact the total is something like 0.6% of the population spread around like everyone else, BS.
Clearly Kansas has changed since the time of Doris Day in "Calamity Jane", or was she then one of the unrecognised communities referred to? And what pray about the inclinations of the horses?
Sam - when I posted the thing I didn't quite believe is wasn't a joke. There's optimism for you.
Wiggia - I think that's seen as an advantage, a reason to be politically patronising.
Demetrius - we keep a sharp eye on the inclination of the horses whenever we have to cross their fields while out walking.
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