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Eyes Wide Open Across Pennsylvania

The Spring Tour 2007

Slippery Rock University: Slippery Rock, PA
April 24 - 25, 2007

Over twenty two students, a few faculty and community people gathered to be trained as listeners the day before Eyes Wide Open was to be shown. The listening training we do with volunteers at all exhibits.  Sharon Sykora, the main organizer of the event, had given her class an assignment to be observers and to listen to people as they came to the exhibit. At the training I asked them what concerns they had for the next day and what they expected the student’s reactions to be. Their main concern was that people would mainly be uninterested and take no notice.

The next morning early we laid the boots out in the central grassy quad area where everyone would walk by sometime during the day. The volunteers decided to arrange them in a diamond shape with the local boots in the center. During the day they identified at least one graduate of the university who had been killed.

As the student volunteers started their assignment of listening they discovered that the students, faculty and support staff were very pleased to have the exhibit at the school. Many of them had family and/or friends who were over there and some of them knew people whose boots were in the PA Eyes Wide Open. The listeners were able to hear the stories and understand the impact the war was making on many lives.

The second day the exhibit had to go inside into the student union, because of rain. This location was not as well traveled; however by the end of the two days most students, faculty and a number of the local community had seen the boots, read the messages and viewed the Iraqi exhibit.
Scilla Wahrhaftig  

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