Audacious Epigone mentions that Kansas University is hosting a Tunnel of Oppression in which you walk through a tunnel and get yelled at by students and staff of color pretending to be white racists. Or something.

What really jumped out at me reading up on the Tunnel of Oppression phenomenon was that it seems to appeal most to the most fly-overish colleges imaginable: Boise State, Wichita State, Texas Tech, Indiana, Southern Illinois, Northern Illinois, Western Illinois, and so forth.

You might think that the Tunnel of Oppression would appeal to coastal elitists, but I can’t find any evidence that Harvard, Yale, or Princeton have ever touched the Tunnel of Oppression with a ten-foot pole.

You might think that ultra-liberal Brown U. would host the Tunnel of Oppression, but a Google search reveals only that it was set up in the Brown Ballroom at Illinois State. Similarly, the Tunnel of Oppression has been at Penn State, but not at Ivy League Penn.

In the San Francisco Bay area, the Tunnel of Oppression has been hosted at San Jose State, Santa Clara, and Cal State East Bay, but not, as far as I can tell, at Berkeley or Stanford.

Similarly, the Tunnel of Oppression Test can distinguish Directional State Universities from the more prestigious Flagship Universities. The Tunnel of Oppresion was featured at the U. of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, but not at the U. of Wisconsin-Madison. It was at the Texas State (which What Would Tyler Durden Do suggested is not an actual college but merely a made-up university to play against in the Big Game in football movies), but not at the U. of Texas-Austin. Washington State in Pullman on the Idaho border is a stronghold of the Tunnel of Oppression, but not the U. of Washington in fashionable Seattle.

This even works for the most subtle distinctions in status. For example, in the Cal State system, Cal Poly Pomona has a Tunnel of Oppression but not Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. What’s the difference between the two Cal Polys? If you have to ask, perhaps you’d be more comfortable in Pomona.

So, basically, if your college hosts an annual Tunnel of Oppression, your only hope in life is to be the costume designer for Napoleon Dynamite 2.

Language NSFW:

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