Oct.19: Updating you on our actions related to safety and campus culture

October 19, 2023 

Earlier this year, we promised to keep you up to date on the actions we are taking to make the changes we need to improve safety and security, and to improve the culture and climate on our campuses.  

We are providing the campus with a post-incident update to summarize input gathered from a variety of sources and to highlight some of the actions required (or that are already underway) to continuously improve the University’s response to emergency situations, and to reflect on wider issues identified in the period after the attack in June 2023.  

We have identified four distinct areas where we provide updates to the University community: 

• Emergency Management Procedures
• Emergency Communications 
• Safety and Physical Security 
• Campus Communities, Culture and Climate

The updates we are sharing include information on the teams and units who are progressing this work, our reflections on some of the challenges and opportunities we have identified, and actions we are taking to keep improving. 

You can expect to hear more updates in due course related to changes to the Emergency Response Plan, training and awareness, updates to our emergency notification protocols, and learnings from our dialogue with the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.   

We will continue to listen to your feedback as we proceed with the actions identified in the update. You can continue to submit your comments by email to communications@uwaterloo.ca or anonymously online.  

We also encourage you to attend the first in our new speaker series examining antagonism and intimidation in academia. On Tuesday, October 24, panelists in the first event of the series will explore several important topics such as responding to silence arising from gendered harassment and workplace threats of violence; unpacking the public silencing of expertise when Black women engage in anti-racist work; countering the view that teaching about structural inequalities and social injustices is “ideological,” rather than empirically-based; and emphasizing the merits of inclusivity in the classroom and creating learning environments of respect even where differences prevail. 

 
Vivek Goel 
President and Vice-Chancellor 
Office of the President
 
James W.E. Rush 
Vice-President, Academic and Provost 
Office of the Vice-President, Academic and Provost