Ruby Zenteno ’17, Psychology Major

The best way to combat ignorance in higher education is to encourage understanding and perspective changes. One of the best things that I ever went through in a class was in my social psychology class. We played Monopoly, but each person was given a specific set of instructions. It was randomized, so you didn’t know which one you’d get, but you had to play according to those rules instead of the regular rules of Monopoly.

We had some people who, for every move or every three moves they made, got 300 dollars to buy property. And then we had some who, for every piece of property they stepped on that wasn’t theirs, got money taken away and were thrown in jail for two turns. There were very, very drastic differences, which taught us about privilege. People who had never experienced the disenfranchised side of life were surprised to know that somebody’s experiences could, in fact, be like this. So I think trying to encourage people to walk in the shoes of others really goes a long way.