Anti-racism initiatives

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:

• the staff of these units does not, in most ways, reflect the racial, ethnic or cultural diversity of the student body that the units serve[2].  As we consider how to bridge this gap, we need to ensure we are equipped to support the diverse UWaterloo student body on issues related to race and anti-racism.
• we need to be intentional about this work and to create space and time to be thoughtful about it. 
• in order to be successful, this work needs also to be intersectional. This means being mindful of the ways that experiences of racism can be compounded by other social identities like gender, sexual orientation, and class.
• there are issues of systemic racism that are beyond our scope to fully remedy within our units, but we have a responsibility to act where and how we can and to collaborate with others across the University to maximize our impact. This includes addressing and remedying individual, institutional and systemic forms of racism within our scope.
• this is a living strategy. We understand that goals, terms we use, and approaches to this work will shift and change over time as we continue to learn and deepen our practice.

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.

Our work is meaningfully anti-racist by design and Black, Indigenous, and other racialized students and staff are actively engaged as integral contributors to the unit, fully supported and able to thrive. Leadership and staff members champion anti-racist perspectives in the work they do and have access to resources and supports to continually grow their knowledge.

Guiding principles in this work:

1. We centre and celebrate voices of Black, Indigenous and other racialized peoples [3]. We understand that the success of this work depends on recognizing and acting on their experiences, contributions, expertise, and leadership.
2. We can all contribute positively. We all have a responsibility to take informed action to create and maintain an anti-racist environment for our staff and the students we serve.
3. We are all learners. We are informed by and honour multiple ways of knowing, systems of knowledge, resources and sources of learning and inspiration. We value and know each other and believe everyone can learn and grow.
4. We don’t have to know everything before we act. We can implement changes to our work based on our growing knowledge and awareness. We understand that the process is not linear, and we may change course or alter our practice as our knowledge expands and circumstances change. This is a process, not a plan.
5. We will hold ourselves accountable for our actions. We understand that this work requires honest reflection and a sometimes uncomfortable reckoning with past actions or processes. We will do the work to fix transgressions once identified.
6. We call people in. We treat well-intentioned mistakes and missteps with grace and compassion. We also understand that people can be hurt even if there was no intent to harm. We support each other as we grow knowledge.
7. This work is ongoing. We recognize that effective anti-racist practice has no endpoint. We are open to new possibilities and commit to continuous processes of learning and unlearning as we move toward a more anti-racist SSO.

1. Address racism within our work through review, design, delivery and assessment of programs, services, strategies and communications.
2. Create a diverse and welcoming environment in which Black, Indigenous and other racialized staff and students are actively engaged as integral contributors to the unit’s work.
3. Empower and support staff to participate in processes and opportunities which support an anti-racist culture change and support their own development.
   • Consistently address and provide all staff with tools to productively respond to instances of individual racism.
4. Collect and use data (e.g., race-based data) to inform thinking, measure impact and identify strategies to ensure that we are effectively serving our students and staff.

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 duration (e.g., February – June 2021).

Complete

• On-boarding and Baseline Education
  • Identify and make recommendations that will cultivate an anti-racist team culture change through our onboarding process and ongoing education support.
• Strategic Plan Review
  • Identify 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.
• Hiring and Human Resources Best Practices
  • Identify and make recommendations to align SSO hiring and student recruitment practices with Human Resources to ensure hiring managers have tools to reduce bias in the hiring process. 

Future

• Equity Deserving Data Collection 
  • Align plans for data collection about equity-deserving groups with guidance from central administration.
• Programming Review/ Audit
  • Identify 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
  • Identify, recommend and implement best practices for consultations with students from equity-deserving groups, including racialized students.

Do you have feedback for our anti-racism work or have an issue to report specific to your experience with the SSO? Contact Pam Charbonneau.

[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.