.jpg)
For six days, students from the University of Ottawa camped in front of the office of their rector, Jacques Frémont. From Friday to last Wednesday, for 120 hours, they picketed to demand structural changes against racism on their campus. In particular, they requested a dialogue with the President and Vice-Chancellor, Jill Scott. But the meeting never took place.
Following endless conversations over a whole year, the President's Advisory Committee for a Racism-Free Campus was dissolved on November 23, some time later The N-word controversy. The University of Ottawa is now proposing an Action Committee on Anti-Racism and Inclusion, whose special adviser is Boulou Ebanda from B'béri. This new committee is causing discontent among students and some professors.
They believe that the previous committee had made concrete proposals that were not implemented by the university management. La Converse went to meet the demonstrators to understand the ins and outs of this case, which revealed a trend in Canadian universities.
“I'm missing a lesson to teach you one”
Installed on small leather benches, wearing masks, more than thirty of them are doing their best in a room. The rector's office is located in this building. Posters with the hashtag #URACISME are stuck everywhere. “I'm missing a lesson to teach you one and I'm tired of being silenced,” reads a protest poster placed near the president's office. Not far from it you can see a painted portrait of Mr. Frémont on a gigantic canvas as high as the wall. Judy El-Mohtadi did not expect to stay that long.
“We thought the rector would agree to see us after a few hours; we were just asking for a dialogue. It's as if we didn't have enough legitimacy in the eyes of the university, it's very condescending,” she said at the end of the six-day demonstration. The students oppose the creation of the second committee against racism and call for the implementation of the recommendations made by the first committee. During the peaceful demonstration, two white men in their forties entered the building and hurled antisemitic insults and insults at the students.
One of them was wearing a military uniform. “You are Jews, you are communists, you want to divide us,” they shouted. A scene that upset the young demonstrators. “What impressed me was the military suit that one of them was wearing,” said Khadija El Hilali, who was the first to have seen the men enter the building by the stairs at the bottom.
“We managed to calm the situation without calling the protective services,” adds the student. That same evening, members of the Gee Gees, the university's sports teams, went to sleep with the demonstrators to ensure their safety. “This type of intimidation is nothing new for us; it has happened a lot since we have come out on racial issues,” explains Khadija. According to the president of the University of Ottawa Student Union, Babacar Faye, who was also present at the sit-in, the current climate is very difficult for black students.
After the debate over the use of the N word in class, there was graffiti with the N word painted on a faculty member's door and on a car parked near campus. Supremacist messages were sent to a printer, which printed them out until it was unplugged. “It seems like the university doesn't see what's going on and doesn't understand that the situation is particularly difficult for black students. I receive messages from foreign students who tell me they are being discriminated against as soon as they arrive at the University, or when they need support,” he testifies.
“The way the university has dealt with the problem is to pretend that there are measures when there are none. It's simply a re-branding. In fact, no one consults students. It seems like it's more of a media effort than an effort to combat anti-black racism,” continues Babacar. Yanaminah Thullah, co-president of the Black Student Leaders Association, also picketed in front of the rector's office. For her, this story goes beyond what's happening at the University of Ottawa.
“It's important for me to be here because as a black woman, it's a battle that I have to fight, whether I want to or not. It's a fight that goes beyond me, and it's not just about black students. I also fight for Indigenous students and other racialized students who are treated differently on campus. In short, it is a battle for the community and against systemic racism.”
“We don't want to tell the administration what to do, we just want the university to understand how they're hurting us and how they can avoid hurting us,” adds Yanaminah, who believes that the university reacted quickly by putting in place measures to combat racism, but that these measures proved to be ineffective in the long term. “It won't happen in a day, they're small changes, but they can take us a long way.”, concludes the student.
Recurring incidents
It all started with the arrest of Jamal Koulmiye-Boyce. In June 2019, the 20-year-old student, who was then vice president of the Conflict Studies and Human Rights Students' Association, went to his office on campus. A security guard calls him up and asks for his identity card, which the young man does not have on him. “I was told that I did not seem to be a student and that this was not the place for me. I took out my phone and started filming the scene explaining that I was not comfortable,” he said. Jamal was finally handcuffed for over two hours, surrounded by five campus security guards. Ottawa police officers then intervened.
“I was in shock and asked them why I was handcuffed and why the police had been called. The police put me in the back of a patrol car, I asked them to remove my handcuffs and told me to be quiet, that they had a gun and that I was risking prison. Afterwards, they took off my handcuffs and said, “I hope you have learned your lesson.” And they left.”
Two years earlier, during his orientation week, he had not been able to attend a party because he did not have his shirt on. A police officer intervened, cut off his bracelet and dragged him off campus. Jamal was 18 at the time. For him, these two incidents reveal a problem with racial profiling on campus, and he wants it to stop. After the second incident, he posted a series of tweets and the blunder was covered by numerous media, which embarrassed the university.
After much pressure from a student collective, the president's committee for a racism-free campus was formed. “At the beginning, this committee consisted of university staff members, and very few people of color were on it. We have prepared a press conference to denounce the university's inaction.
After that, a few hours before the first committee meeting, we were invited to participate,” says the student. He was also present at the sit-in and said he had spent an exhausting year.
“I have younger brothers, and when they go to college, as black students, they shouldn't have to make sure they're safe when they come to get an education. That is why we are organizing this sit-in, because we have had enough of this succession of incidents and committees.”
Committees: “a dangerous cycle with no tangible changes”
For over a year, students and professors worked together as part of the first committee — created following discrimination denounced by Jamal Koulmiye-Boyce — to develop recommendations. This committee was chosen by the president and his mandate was to advise him. Jason Seguya, equity commissioner at the University of Ottawa Students' Union, was a member of the dissolved committee. The fourth-year student, who participated in the recent sit-in in front of the rector's office, notes that the university tends to avoid structural changes.
“We did our research on what is being done in other universities, and we proposed concrete recommendations against racism. Quickly, we discovered that other groups had proposed recommendations in previous years that were along the same lines as ours, but that they were never implemented.
So it became clear to us that we were engaging in a very dangerous cycle,” he reports. For a year, with a dozen racialized students and the collaboration of the caucus of racialized professors and librarians, the committee proposed structural changes against racism to the rector Jacques Frémont.
Magalie Lefèbvre, Equity Commissioner at the University of Ottawa Graduate Students Association (GSAÉD), was also a member of this committee. According to her, the rector rarely came to meetings.
Information confirmed by other members of the committee. She also believes that racialized students were instrumentalized in the first committee. Professor Nadia Abu-Zahra, from the racialized faculty and librarian caucus, also served on the committee. “When we realized that the new security advisor, Dan Delaney, was an Ottawa police superintendent who had already killed an Aboriginal man in crisis, the university did not want to talk about it,” she illustrates.
“At the last meeting on 21 October, we expressed reservations about the fact that the committee was only making recommendations. They said that we needed an action committee, that we could not simply advise the president,” says Nadia Abu-Zahra. At the request of the rector, a few days later, the caucus made recommendations for an anti-racist university in a report entitled”The university of tomorrow”.
The measures proposed by professors and students were very similar. Six days later, the committee was dissolved, the recommendations were ignored and the rector proposed a new committee. For his part, Jacques Frémont declined our request for an interview. But according to the communications department, he listens to and acts in consultation with the university community. “An action plan without adequate input from the community is doomed to failure. For over a year, we have been listening to these students, as well as many other Black, Indigenous, and racialized individuals, members of the student community, faculty, and staff — and we will continue to do so. [...] The President believes that we need to act quickly.
We respect the right of students to express their views on such a crucial issue and we denounce racism in all its forms.”, replied Isabelle Mailloux-Pulkinghorn, media relations manager at the University of Ottawa.
An anti-racist educational institution?
But how do you create an anti-racist university? “Our demands are already being implemented at other universities,” notes student Jason Seguya. In particular, students and professors recommend the compulsory teaching of a course on anti-racism. Khadija El Hilali has also launched a petition in favor of this course for all students at Carleton University and Ottawa.
“On the Carleton side, the university is in favor of this initiative [...] but at the University of Ottawa, it took more than two months before getting a response from the rector,” explains the founder of the campus's anti-racist collective. The recommendations report The University of Tomorrow also proposes the creation of an anti-racism office, as at the University of Toronto.
This office would be provided with adequate resources that would help resolve complaints, develop an anti-racism educational program, guide strategic initiatives for anti-racist and decolonial education, and ensure community awareness and engagement. It would also be independent of the rector. The students also propose better funding for student organizations and a center for Indigenous and Black experiences.
“We shouldn't have to do this work during our exams, and in the middle of a pandemic,” laments Jamal Koulmiye-Boyce. It is a task that should be paid for with adequate resources.” Along the same lines as Queen's University Wellness Services, the report The University of Tomorrow proposes to hire mental health clinicians who specialize in trauma caused by racialization experiences. Therapists should be diverse enough for clients to be able to choose someone from their own ethnic group.
They should also be able to demonstrate their experience and success in helping people of color who are coping with the stress and trauma caused by racism, colonialism, and discrimination.
Echoes far beyond the University of Ottawa
But this case goes beyond the University of Ottawa. It can in fact be traced back to retired Canadian senator Anne Cools and an incident she experienced in the 1960s. “This situation reminds me a lot of what we went through in 1969 at Concordia, which was called Sir George Williams University at the time,” said Ms. Cools.
A group of Concordia students organized a 10-day sit-in on the ninth floor of the building, after a controversy with a biology professor, Peter Anderson. The latter would have given poor grades to black Caribbean students compared to white students and, in general, treated them differently.
After protests, the professor stopped teaching, and the university proposed creating a committee to investigate student complaints. A proposal that they had described as a “kangaroo court”.
“It was absurd. We were defamed, the university did not understand what black students were going through,” said the senator, who was among the protesters. Mrs. Cools was arrested and imprisoned for a few months. Several students were even deported.
Today, she believes that committees can be useful if you work with honest people. “But you have to constantly support them,” says the former senator.
“Once we get into the language of committees, we are dealing with very serious laws. Because they create circumstances that exclude us, but without us thinking of being excluded. It is absurd. So, if we can avoid them and rely on morals and principles, I think we are more likely to get there,” she said.
With regard to the situation at the University of Ottawa, Ms. Cools said she would like to have a conversation with President Jacques Frémont. “He would be a bit more aware of his position and more concerned about his actions.”
As for students, she suggests that they learn what people can do to protect their interests. “It's better to learn how power works when you're young than to discover it later and be horribly disappointed as you age.”
To go further...
The University of TomorrowNinth Floor: a movie about the 1969 Concordia sit-inIntegrating an Aboriginal culture into the university, Moira Macdonald, University AffairsResilience, Resistances and Solidarities, Elaine Coburn, Nouveaux Cahiers du SocialismeBehind Diversity and Inclusive Politics: A Reading from a Francophone Scholar at the Margin of the Canadian Academy, Mianda, Resistances and Solidarities, Elaine Coburn, Nouveaux Cahiers du SocialismeBehind Diversity and Inclusive Politics: A Reading from a Francophone Scholar at the Margin of the Canadian Academy, Mianda, Gertrude, Canadian Journal of Sociology