Annual Creed Week exhibit educates about social issues
There’s a light at the end of the Tunnel of Awareness for students who experience the exhibit highlighting social justice issues.
“It leaves you curious as to what else you really don’t know,” first-year exercise science student Dominique Francis said.
Currently in its third year, the annual exhibit is designed to be an informative experience about social justice. It is a part of USC’s Carolinian Creed and Diversity Week, sponsored by the Carolina Judicial Council, the Office of Academic Integrity, the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs and EMPOWER, a social justice and diversity education program.
More than 500 people participated in the Tunnel of Awareness last year, according to the tunnel’s committee chairwoman Lizzie Dement, a higher education and student affairs graduate student. She said she expects even more participants this year since the tunnel will be open for four days compared to last year’s two.
The tunnel, located on the first floor of Patterson Hall, consists of five rooms sponsored by different campus groups.
Guided by a volunteer, tunnelgoers are exposed to five prominent social justice matters: masculinity, HIV and the AIDS virus, education, women in the penal system and suicide.
The masculinity room, sponsored by the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, features pieces of cardboard pinned to the black-curtain walls. Each board displays images that represent manliness. When when flipped over, the boards show statistics about binge drinking, depression and suicide and statistical differences for men and women.
The floor is littered with sporting equipment, and an audio track in the background plays stereotypically masculine phrases like “Don’t be a sissy,” “Rub some dirt on it” and “Dude, I love you. No homo.”
The second stop in the tunnel, sponsored by the Office of Community Service, is a room full of facts and figures about HIV. In the corner stands a mirror that reads, “This is what being HIV/AIDS positive looks like,” with the aim of encouraging an end to discrimination against those infected. One wall reads, “R U positive? HIV/AIDS knows NO color, race, sex or age.”
The third room, created by EMPOWER, focuses on education, with information about international education program, dropout rates, outdated materials and income variations.
Also sponsored by the Office of Community Service, the fourth room provides information about women in the penal system and their challenges.
At the center of the room stands a table with a lamp, two pairs of handcuffs and a book of firsthand accounts of women who had been sexually abused while in prison. Statistics regarding health care in prison and the effects of sexual violence on children line the walls of the room.
The final room, sponsored by To Write Love on Her Arms, promotes suicide awareness. On the walls hang mirrors with encouraging messages such as “Help is real” and “Your story matters.” In the corner, participants can write notes of hope on a large board.
Three green platforms with 105 small red flags on them hang from another corner in the room. Each flag represents a suicide in America on an average day.
“I knew about most of that stuff, but it’s more real when you see it,” second-year environmental science student Kinteshia Scott said.
After emerging from the tunnel, participants are taken into a brighter room to reflect on everything they have seen while a moderator encourages conversation and poses questions.
Despite the sobering representations and statistics presented in the tunnel, Francis said he did not leave the exhibit with negative feelings.
“I feel optimistic,” he said. “You see what other people have to deal with and you say, ‘I’m doing pretty darn good.’”