Residence Hall Association confronted students with eight different scenarios of oppression in the "Tunnel of Oppression" Monday and Tuesday evenings.
Tour guides took students through situations of hate toward different groups of people.
"It's a sensory experience for participants," RHA advisor Shaundra Rose said.
RHA members enacted skits focused on homosexuals, domestic violence, homelessness, sexism, racism, body images, suicide and people with disabilities.
For racism, two actors portrayed Ku Klux Klan members whom yelled obscene phrases at the audience.
"Those KKK people were in my face saying I was worthless and I wanted to fight back," freshman Paul Martin said.
In the body image scenario, two female actors worked out, casually talking about drinking milk to help them throw up.
Martin said he actually knew people who did this.
After the audience had walked through the tunnel, set up in the Botsford Swinford residence hall lobby, the students were shown three white boards on which they could paint things they had heard.
One student wrote "Welcome to Hell."
The boards will be put on display on University Green 3 p.m. Wednesday.
Afterward, Derick Virgil, director of the Multicultural Center, will give a speech at 4 p.m. Friday and students will help dismantle the boards.
After painting the words, students were led to a separate room where they could discuss what they had heard.
"When they go through this event, it's such an emotional event that they need to talk through it," Rose said.
For some students, it was an uncomfortable but necessary process.
"It was kind of hard to hear but they're trying to make a point and it's a valid point," senior Robin Polakoff said.
The program also had an impact for the students involved in it.
"Personally, it's hard because people who walk through here only hear it once, but you hear it over and over again," tour guide and actor Anne Reder said. "Listening to what they say in the racism room (was hard). The idea of the things people say, words have so much power."
RHA has been planning the tunnel since December, Rose said.
The idea came from a similar program at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, but was tailored to Ball State, she said.
"Our goal was to promote individual differences and increase knowledge different types of oppression that happen daily on campus," Rose said.
Though the event was open to all students, most participants were hall councils.
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