In mid-2020, alongside horrific events like George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, global dialogue around anti-racism, anti-black racism, and the Black Lives Matter movement entered prominent mainstream conversation. Simultaneously, voices across campus began to call for specific anti-racist changes at the University of Waterloo. In this context, the senior leadership teams in the Student Success Office (SSO) and AccessAbility Services (AAS) began to reflect on gaps in our own work and committed to an anti-racist culture change across the units [1].
Within the team’s conversations, we recognized a few things:
Feedback on our approach was solicited, received and incorporated from various groups on campus, including UWaterloo’s Equity Office and Indigenous Initiatives Office, the Waterloo Undergraduate Student Association and the Graduate Student Association. Solicitation of feedback and formal consultation on this work will be ongoing and will include UWaterloo students and others as needed in a respectful manner.
This work is anti-racist in focus, but the framework and guiding principles may be used to support other equity-deserving groups on campus as we continue to expand our practice.
To meet our goals, we will form multiple working groups, some of which will focus on our student-facing work, and others that focus on our behind-the-scenes personal and staff development. Working groups will have a specific focus and discrete duration (e.g., February – June 2021).
At present, these are the groups that we anticipate running within the next calendar year, but timing may shift depending on bandwidth within the office and in order to align with broader initiatives across campus.
In-Progress:
The following working groups are in progress as of March 2021 and the identified goals are expected to be completed by July 2021.
On-boarding and Baseline Education Working GroupIn ProgressIdentify and make recommendations that will cultivate an anti-racist team culture change through our onboarding process and ongoing education support.
Strategic Plan Review Working GroupIn ProgressIdentify and recommend new/revised language for our strategy documents with an eye towards ensuring our goals for an anti-racist culture change are embedded within these core documents.
Forthcoming:
The following groups are expected to launch in 2021 and are working to accomplish their identified goals in 2022.
Programming review / audit working groupForthcomingIdentify and recommend a process for the SSO to engage in an audit of current programming/work to identify opportunities to reduce institutional or structural racism, and increase equity and inclusion.
Student/Staff Consultation Practices Working GroupForthcomingIdentify, recommend, and implement best practices for consultation with students from equity-deserving groups, including racialized students.
Equity Deserving Data Collection Working GroupForthcomingAlign plans for data collection about equity-deserving groups with guidance from central administration.
Hiring and HR Best Practices Working GroupForthcomingIdentify and make recommendations to ensure that SSO hiring and student recruitment practices are aligned with Human Resources to ensure hiring managers have tools to reduce bias in the hiring process.
[2] Here we define ‘anti-racist’ or anti-racism as an active and consistent process of change to eliminate individual, institutional, and systemic racism within the scope of our work.
[3] We understand that this guiding principle is difficult to enact fully at present, given how few Black, Indigenous and other people of colour work within and with the SSO and AAS. One of our strengths is our ability to make decisions collaboratively, but we recognize that there is a lack of diversity around our tables which means that important perspectives are unavailable or underrepresented. Until we are more broadly inclusive, we understand this guiding principle to mean that we need to seek out these perspectives intentionally, respectfully and meaningfully.
