Ronnie Antonio Paris, Jr. was a 3-year-old boy whose father beat him to death because he thought the child would grow up to be homosexual.

Omaha’s percentage of black children in poverty is the highest in the nation. Being from Hawaii is not the same as being Hawaiian.

These are a few of the facts that were on display in the Tunnel of Oppression, a diversity training program sponsored by the Department of Residence Life’s Sophomore Program to call attention to issues and prejudices in the Omaha community.

Five themed rooms made up the tunnel, which was scheduled to be open from Wednesday to Friday in the basement of Deglman Hall.

The first four rooms focused on different social issues: living wages, violence in North Omaha, sexual orientation and ethnicity. The fifth room was the Room of Hope.

Each room had photos, collages, stories, poems and statistics to educate students, faculty and staff about the different kinds of oppression that occur in the Omaha area.

“We’ve tried this year especially to focus on things that are relevant to Creighton students and focus on things in the area and things that are happening on our campus and in our community that we aren’t necessarily aware of on an everyday basis,” said Sarah Gude, Arts & Sciences senior, McGloin Hall resident adviser and member of the Tunnel of Oppression’s logistics committee. “It’s a good educational opportunity for the campus.”

“Students said, ‘let’s make an experience where others can share in this information and see and learn and grow,'” said MacGarret Becker, Swanson Hall resident director and adviser for the sophomore program staff members working on the Tunnel.

“We’ve hit a couple different topics, and I think in the future we’ll work to diversify our topics and still remain committed to the issues that are present at Creighton.”

Rachel Bloom, Arts & Sciences sophomore and member of the Gay-Straight Alliance, worked on the Room of Sexual Orientation and said the room’s main focus centers on the issues college students have to deal with and questions regarding sexual orientation.

The room included an exhibit about Facebook and how it “kind of forces them [students] to tell the world what they are,” Bloom said.

It also had a wall of hate crimes and posters hanging from the ceiling that describe some of the things heterosexual people can legally do that homosexual people can’t.

“Just going into all the different prejudices and oppression that a lot of LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] students go through – it’s been really eye-opening to me because you think you know what there is, and then there’s always more,” Bloom said.

Arts & Sciences senior and McGloin Hall assistant resident director Kevin Cleary worked on the ethnicity room, which had facts about race and racism written on the walls.

“I’ve never worked on Tunnel before, so being able to see what all goes into this, all the research and the dedication and hard work by our residence life staff – just to put that into an experience that we’re going to give to students has been amazing for me,” Cleary said.

News articles covered the Room of Violence in North Omaha.

“We have a lot of silhouettes representing folks in North Omaha with running quotes from people that lived in North Omaha throughout their life,” said Ashley Gappa, Arts & Sciences junior and Kenefick Hall resident adviser. “That’s their community that they live in, and that’s their daily environment. It really makes me open my eyes to the issues that are going on that we may not focus on everyday.”

The last room in the Tunnel of Oppression was the Room of Hope in the Deglman chapel.

“We are one race, the human race,” a poster said.