Diversity In Boxes And Walls

I waited in line two hours to see Boxes and Walls but it was worth it. The title means it wants students to tear down walls and throw away boxes that hold stereotypes. Boxes and Walls was a very interactive experience where we walked through six experiences of diversity and oppression. There was African-American, Latino/Latina, disability, LGB, gender, and socio-economic status experiences. Each experience allowed me to feel and sense what life was like from someone else’s perspective. I was able to understand and appreciate what some students must experience at UW-Whitewater every day. When I entered the disability experience, someone immediately started yelling telling us what station to go to as if we were hard of hearing and couldn’t follow directions very well. One station had us use wheelchairs, another you had to play checkers with …show more content…
Of course we couldn’t understand anything. By speaking only in Spanish they were trying to show how they have to deal with not understanding English. In the gender experience, we were handed a card assigning us to a group of transgender, gay, female or male. Then each group was taken through childhood, puberty, teens, high school and college. We were told what toys we would play with, what make up to wear, what makes a boy or a girl. They were trying to show us how we are told what to do depending on if you are male or female our whole lives and how difficult it is for those that don’t know whether they want to be a boy or a girl. In the social-economic experience, we assigned a certain amount of play money and were told what we had to pay for like gas, credit cards, cell phone, rent. Some people were told their parents were paying for somethings. Many participants ended up with not enough money to pay all of their expenses. This showed us what it was like to not have enough money to pay for everyday