KarMel Scholarship 2007

“The Light at the End of the Tunnel”

By Lauren Le Page

Desciption of Submission: non-fiction essay/features article on the Tunnel of Oppression

I thought I could handle the tunnel.

But by the time the screaming started, and one of the men grabbed my left arm, dragging me toward the ‘gas chamber,’ my eyes were wet. He shoved me through the door into the pitch-black nothingness, and I instinctively threw up both arms. In one hand I had my reporter’s notepad. In the other, my pen. Just keep walking, I thought. The room has to have an edge. I reached a corner and backed into it, feeling the warmth of bodies gathering around me. I clutched my notepad to my chest; my heart thudding like bass: strong, deep and fast. We all stood in the dark together, united in the pain of the Tunnel of Oppression. Someone flicked on a black light. The walls, illuminated in an eerie purple haze, looked as if they had chickenpox. “Each dot here represents the same number of people slaughtered in genocide. Combined, these dots represent over 24 million lives lost,” a tour guide said.

“Holy Jesus,” one woman whispered.

By the time we had reached the tunnel’s gas chamber, we were all grim. Some students bore wet cheeks. Others cradled their stomachs the way toddlers do when they’re sick and need help. Friends and significant others held hands and shared hugs. The gestures were clear: It will be OK. I am here for you.

But there is a funny thing about history and geography. What we feel distanced from in time and space – like genocide, both past and present – we cannot compute into our own lives necessarily. But when I stepped into the homosexuality room earlier in the tour, I realized the danger myself and others face in our society today.

When we all crammed into that room, our spirits were still high. We had made it past the border protesters blocking us and chanting, “Hell no, go back to Mexico!” And we had made it through class, barely, where we all failed to follow the instructions scrambled on the overhead. Dyslexia or not, we had to know what box on the ground to stand in. “Move, retards, you’re in the wrong box!” our ‘teacher’ had said.

But as we filed into the LGBT room, the stakes grew higher. We were all silent but we heard a woman’s voice (recorded). “I don’t understand. I didn’t ask for this. I don’t want this. Will they still be proud of me? I don’t know who to tell, who to talk to.”

I stood off to one side, scrawling notes non-stop, writing every detail, every word. “So, when did you decide to be gay?” a tour guide said to me. My hand froze as I looked up at her. The sad girl’s voice carried on in the background. “High school,” I said. Something flickered in my tour guide’s eyes, like a match lit but blown out quickly. Realization. Yes, I wore a nametag bearing the term “faggot,” but it was only by chance. Others had nametags saying, “gimp,” “red man” and other demeaning terms. But mine was considerably “true,” because I am bisexual.

“You do know what people say, right?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Yeah?” she said. Her voice had an edge – enough threat, in fact, that I glanced at my peers for support. They stood still, eyes wide but mouths shut.

“Do your parents know?”

“Yeah.”

“So do your friends still talk to you after all of this?” she said, smirking.

“Some of them don’t,” I said.

“It’s fucking disgusting, that’s why,” she said. The tour guides laughed together, closing in on me. I wanted to bolt from the room, but I used my notepad as a shield between us, glancing down frequently and focusing on taking notes of our words.

“Fucking faggot,” another girl muttered.

“You know what the Bible says, right? You know what GOD says? It’s a fucking sin. And you still don’t care that you’re going to burn in hell?” She glanced over my shoulder and said, “Why are you pretending to be her friend?” My head whipped around and I found a tall gentleman – not just any man, but my resident assistant’s boyfriend. My sinking heart leapt at the discovery. He said nothing but gazed steadfastly at the women, standing tall and proud. I felt protected, supported.

The tour guides moved on to other victims, chosen randomly from our group. Their words were wounding, but this was their job.

“A lot of actors have to recuperate after the experience. They’re like, ‘I’ve been yelling at people; I’ve been mean to people all night long. I don’t know how people can do this,’ ” said Brian E. Shimamoto, who helped bring the Tunnel of Oppression to the University of Arizona in Fall 2005. The tunnel was originally designed by students at Western Illinois University in 1994 and has been since adopted by other universities throughout the U.S.

Students wanted other students to feel firsthand the effects of discrimination, including cruelty against the LGBT community.

“People feel pain every day, and you may not feel it but you’re going to feel it today because we want you to know what everyone else around you might feel like,” said then-president of Residence Life Sam Brace.

Leaving the dark confines of the tunnel, we all had a chance to write on two walls our feelings or thoughts. People left the tunnel weary but wiser. The creators and actors hoped students would mend their ways and become accepting of differences. I saw the tunnel was working from the words scribbled on butcher paper: “I regret something I do now,” one person wrote. Another shared only one word: “ashamed.” Someone else put what I felt like: “I want to curl up and cry.”

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