Mid-year Training, Boxes & Walls

Hal writes:

I wanted to start this post with a picture of me playing Dodgeball. Unfortunately, I have not been able to get any of those pictures yet, so they may appear in a future post. This last weekend was mid-year training for the RAs on campus. It was a jam packed weekend and I was in charge of planning a few of the events, so it made for a busy weekend. Since I was in charge of the evening social, I coordinated an open gym for just our group in the field house. In addition to Volleyball, Basketball, and Dodgeball, we played some camp games (ala "Fishy, fishy cross my sea!") The ten RDs took on RAs (in groups of ten) in Dodgeball games. We have a Dodgeball club on campus so we had official dodgeballs and rules. The RDs lost all the games (we almost won once), but the RAs had a lot of fun with it. I had brought my track spikes to see how fast I could make it around the track but after Dodgeball and some basketball, I decided against hurting myself further.

One of the projects that myself and four other RDs have been working on for the past couple of months is preparing a program called "Boxes & Walls". It is a tolerance museum that we set up in my residence hall (utilizing the multipurpose room, an entirely empty suite, and a study lounge). It felt like a wedding: months of planning, a couple of hours at the actual event, and then it's over. But the materials are still up as we are leaving it open during certain times for the public during the next two weeks.

I took a lot of pictures but for the sake of brevity I am only showing a few. So keep in mind that what you are seeing is just a glimpse of the overall program and you are withdrawn because you are not emotionally involved by walking through this with a group of people.

The tour begins in the multipurpose room. The first thing you encounter are a number of pictures of acts of hate that have occurred in the United States (see photo below). Also in the room are a variety of displays, a "library" of selected books we put together, some computer terminals to explore Internet resources, and a video running on the projection screen called hate.com.


My colleague and I created about 16 different informational boards. It doesn't sound like a lot, but when you take the time to research, print out, and put together one of these boards, it takes some time. Below is one of the boards I made on Religious Literacy. The idea for this board came from a book by Stephen Prothero that Jim had given me as a gift this last summer for being in his wedding party. There was a quiz on the board to see how much basic knowledge you knew (i.e. "What are the first five books of the Old Testament?"). The statement that I made with the board is that our nation is a very religious one in spirit, yet we don't have the knowledge/wisdom associated with the faith traditions.

After the multipurpose room, we move to one of the suites. I was in charge of the common area and my colleagues were given specific rooms. The picture below is the closet where I had hung a number of racial terms and what their origins were. On the closet door was a statement about the power of language and how easy it is to use offensive terms to hurt other people. In researching this project I came across words I had heard but some interesting ones that I had not. I won't put them on this site as I don't want to be flagged as a racist web site.

There were four bedrooms that were converted into specific spaces. Again, these are just brief snapshots. Each room required about eight pictures just to get an idea of what was in the room. The picture below is from a room dedicated to talking about African Americans and the struggle for civil rights. The table and chairs were set-up like a lunch counter and had stories and pictures on it about what "sit-ins" were like. We tried to have "experiential" activities in each area. Above the table you can see photos and stories from the civil rights era in US history.

This room was dedicated to issues that women face. You can see three different activities in the photo below. There was a mirror surrounded by pictures of women from magazines that asks the question "what truly is a 'normal' size for a woman?". The scale on the ground was set at 50 pounds instead of 0 and men were asked to step up on the scale and see how they felt when they saw their weight. On the right was a reflection activity for both men and women to write their thoughts down.

This is a relatively new concept for this type of activity, but the picture below is of a room dealing with mental health issues. Unfortunately, you cannot see the "padded room with bars" off to the side that talked about how people have been mistreated in the US due to mental health issues (i.e. electroshock therapy, asylums, etc.). When you walked in there was a noose hanging from the ceiling and there was information about suicide and depression throughout the room. The chair in the corner was another activity, but I forget the details of it.

Out in the kitchen area I did some displays about food consumption (US vs. the world in terms of caloric intake, types of food, etc.) and water. One of my students was impacted at the thought of how in the US there are a number of overweight people where in the rest of the world many are starving from not having enough food. The picture below is from my display about clean water. I highlighted a group called Engineers Without Borders that do great work around the world hoping that the engineering students we have would take an interest in volunteering their talents to help people bring clean water to areas that have none.

One of the many other displays we created. These maps show active hate groups in Minnesota and Wisconsin. I also researched some of these groups on my office computer, so the federal government might be raising an eyebrow to the types of websites that I have been visiting the past couple of months. ;)

After going through the suite, we moved to the first floor study lounge. Along the entire walls was a timeline of events in US history from 1500 to the present. There were also three posters with the phrases "I Wish", "I Think", and "I Feel" where students were able to add their thoughts as a part of the processing.

Again, I wish I could take you through the experience to give you a full glimpse of what we had worked on the past few months. But Anna wanted to be able to see some photos (since I have been talking about it for a long time and she was not here to see it) so you get to see some photos as well.