SEAHO Report - Summer 2012 - (Page 9)

SEAHO FEATURE After learning about House of Privilege from a SEAHO session hosted by James Madison University, we thought it would be a good fit for our students. This program took Tunnel’s scenarios of well-known national news and focused more on oppressive behaviors that may happen on a more casual basis. House of Privilege displayed issues of class, religious differences, and LGBT intolerance. The scenes were scripted and based around rooms in a home. For example, religious differences were discussed in two “living rooms” where one family was celebrating Christmas and one family was celebrating Diwali. Our hope was that this program would educate our students on social justice issues in a way that is relevant to their lives, which would in turn allow them to understand their own privileges and possibly lead to their own activism. In the evaluations of this program, students shared that they were distracted by the scripted nature of the scenes and although they could identify the issues we were addressing, again they were unable to see privilege being present on our campus. Using that feedback, we knew that we needed to limit our focus even more to directly link scenarios to the Rollins campus. campus activities that previous programs did not. Next, an interactive video was added to the event that directly linked everyday examples of privilege to large-scale oppression. If the students were unable to connect the two from the tour, the video made it clear. The conclusion of the event was a conversation facilitated by staff and faculty volunteers with the goal of empowering students to take action in order to make Rollins a safer and more inclusive campus. With a 94.2% response rate, the verdict was in: 97% of respondents thought that this program was necessary on our campus. That was the quantitative data and that qualitative data agreed. During the facilitation component of the event, the conversations were rich and emotions were high. In the past, the program had an audience of primarily first-year students. With a switch to include more upper-class students, the change in depth of conversation was noticeable. Where We’re Going Considering this feedback, Rollins Underground fits for us because it is geared specifically toward our population. Knowing this format works, our future goal is to not let the conversation end when students leave the program. Strategies to keep up the momentum include a Facebook group, follow-up programming, and implementation of privilege conversations into programs we already provide. We understand that in order for real change to occur on campus, this dialogue needs to be infused into the education that our students are experiencing every day. We agree with Dr. Beverly Tatum who wrote in Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? that “We cannot continue to be silent. We must begin to speak, knowing that words alone are insufficient. But I have seen that meaningful dialogue can lead to effective action.” For more information on any of these programs, please contact Whitney McDonald (wnmcdonald@ rollins.edu) or Abby Prokop (aprokop@rollins.edu). Krikau, P. (February 2010). From Tunnel to House (SEAHO presentation, Williamsburg, VA). Tatum, B. (1997). “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria”?. New York, NY: Basic Books. Where We Are Based on what we learned from Tunnel of Oppression and House of Privilege, we went back to the drawing board and created Rollins Underground. After looking at our students developmentally, it made sense: we needed to directly connect the topic of privilege to our students and their daily lives. Abstract ideas weren’t going to cut it. In came the idea for Rollins Underground, which is an experience representational of scenarios that may occur on our own campus, with the aim of students identifying the privileges and personal actions that support these situations and contribute to oppression on a larger scale. Undergraduate resident assistants served as actors and wrote their own scenes that depicted scenarios focusing on domestic violence, religious oppression, classism, body image, heterosexism, and racism. Though the themes were the same from earlier programs, the scenes were more authentic because the student actors were able to use their shared Rollins experiences and language to communicate with the audience. They were able to use commonly known locations on campus and reference SEAHO Report Summer 2012 9

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SEAHO Report - Summer 2012