From April 23-26, rooms 174-76 of the Campus Center will be transformed into ‘Boxes and Walls: The Oppression Experiment’ an interactive museum exploring the experiences of five groups of people who have faced oppression.

Those who enter the museum will examine the daily and historical lives of Asian Americans, Native Americans, African Americans, women, Jews and the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities. The goal of the museum is to encourage participants to ask questions, investigate pre-conceived notions and, ideally, motivate the community to become socially aware through face-to-face confrontations with students who play the roles of oppressors in each room.

For example, in the women’s room, students will confront images of women in the media, as well as experience sexist behavior and harassment.

The Boxes and Walls project began at the University of Wisconsin in 1993, and has spread to colleges and universities across the country. The UMass museum is the work of a one credit course at UMass Hillel called ‘Boxes and Walls’ led by Sarah Raful, a programmer for Jewish students at UMass Hillel, and Chris Rue, a UMass student.

In the course, students participated in hands-on exercises such as role-playing and heard lectures, in addition to learning the histories and experiences of each group. The goal of the class, according to Rue, is ‘to make everyone more aware.’

Raful, who worked on the Boxes and Walls project in Chicago during her time as a student at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, said that the museum is an important experience to all students.

‘[It will] open your eyes to something you’ve never seen or felt, something you didn’t think happened anymore,’ she said. ‘Oppression, hatred and bigotry still exist, and this is an important step forward in causing an end to hatred across the world.’

Rue, a junior Political Science major and the co-instructor of the Boxes and Walls course, explained that the project reflects one of his life goals: to encourage diversity.

‘[I want to] make this world as diverse as possible,’ he said. ‘A lot of oppressed groups don’t realize how close they are to one another.’

Ultimately, the experience of Boxes and Walls, according to Rue is to give people ‘a way of thinking outside their box, to put these experiences right in your face. If you don’t deal with it, your thoughts are never going to change.’

Tours taking participants through each room will be led for groups of 7-9 will leave every half hour and will last about an hour. The museum will be open on Monday from 4-6 p.m., Tuesday from 4-7 p.m., Wednesday from 4-8 p.m. and Thursday from 4-9 p.m.