Daily Pioneer News

PLATTEVILLE- About every three years, the University of Wisconsin-Platteville Student Housing Department hosts a tolerance museum open to the public to educate people on diversity.

Included in this year's Boxes and Walls was a resource room that covered topics such as substance abuse, gay or straight, religious literacy and hate symbols. The tolerance museum covered topics ranging from self-injuring, to depression and suicide, and the civil rights movement.

Student housing uses Boxes and Walls for resident assistants' mid-year training to help RA's create an inclusive environment for all residents, Linda Mulroy-Bowden, associate director for student housing and coordinator for this year's Boxes and Walls, said.

"We want our student staff to learn about issues related to diversity so that they can do their very best to facilitate environments where everyone feels comfortable and welcome," Mulroy-Bowden said. "We also want our staff to be able to respond effectively when issues arise related to diversity."

One hundred and one student staff, 13 professional staff and about a 150 people from the general public attended the display, estimating the total number of visitors to be around 260.

"There is always a lot of on-campus interest," Mulroy-Bowden said. "We have visitors from a variety of the on-campus departments."

Four of the 13 professional staff that attended were directly involved with putting the event together. Matt Zielinski, Hal DeLaRosby, Anna Mroch and Coree Burton, all resident directors for UWP; Alicia Slowey, the gender issues director for Student Senate; and Julie Jones, the graduate assistant for GLBTQ issues, all put in many hours helping to make this event possible.

Student housing has been working on this project since last September. The project was researched and created throughout the fall semester and finalized during Winterim.

"Boxes and Walls was a concept that originated within the UW System, but our ideas and topics are original to UWP," Mulroy-Bowden said.

This was the fifth tolerance museum that student housing has put together, the first Boxes and Walls for UWP was done in 1997.

"We want to do our part in providing opportunities for students to learn and grow so that they can be effective and contributing citizens in the ever growing global society,"Mulroy-Bowden said.

Contact: Linda Mulroy-Bowden, student housing department assistant director, (608) 342-1845, mulroy@uwplatt.edu Written by: Kolina Stieber, UWP Office of Public Relations, (608) 342-1194, stieberk@uwplatt.edu