| 'Is Ryerson racist?' discussion needs to continue immediately |
| By Jenn Watt |
Published
03/28/2007
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Ryersonian editorials , Opinions , Print
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'Is Ryerson racist?' discussion needs to continue immediately
Last week the RSU did what Ryerson’s administration should have done back in November: they held a panel discussion called “Is Ryerson Racist?”
It was the International Day for the Elimination of Racism.
It was also the same day that The Ryersonian published three stories based on the controversy around the “white culture” facebook groups.
After the panel discussion, Nora Loreto, RSU president-elect and current vice-president education, held up The Ryersonian and criticized the timing
and the content of the paper.
“I was offended with the fact that it was the day for the eradication of racism and on the front (of The Ryersonian) was an obscure neo-Nazi,” Loreto told
me later.
The Eyeopener didn’t fare much better at the event.
It was criticized for its November 2006 article “Muslims playing for power,” which suggested that the Muslim Students’ Association is gaining power
on campus through RSU president Muhammad Ali Jabbar.
Add that to the women’s basketball team members who quit over allegedly racist comments made by their coach in the summer, and the overt and
arguably overkill of police presence at the benefit basketball tournament for the players.
It made for an engaging, emotional and difficult event, but one that needed to happen and needs to happen again. Soon.
But what has been truly surprising through all of the race-based conflicts on campus this year has been the total lack of leadership from the administration of Ryerson University itself.
While the student papers, the students’ union, and the students themselves struggle to make sense of all that has happened, our school has done nothing.
From interviews with president Sheldon Levy we know that he’s not keen on the “white culture” groups on facebook.
And we know that he’s not going to comment on the basketball players – who can’t speak for themselves due to a confidentiality agreement that they
signed.
And as each of these events pops into the student consciousness, again and again we have a president who says nothing until pressed and a university that does nothing to address the concerns that are mounting in the general population.
Though there are no figures to fall back on, Ryerson is obviously one of the most multicultural campuses in Canada.
So when race and culture become the focal point, whether it’s institutionalized discrimination like the woeful lack of prayer space for Muslim students, or outright racist rants online, the university has a responsibility to step up.
It should also be noted that the university has yet to send even a token representative to the many events the RSU has held to address equity on campus.
The equity conference, the taskforce on the needs of Muslim students, and now the panel discussion, have all gone without as much as a nod from the administration.
We are lucky at Ryerson to have professors who have a background in diversity, race, immigration and race relations, yet they go underutilized on campus.
One of those professors, Sedef Arat-Koc, spoke at RSU’s panel last week.
I think by now we should all know that ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away.
It’s time for the university to take some responsibility for things that happen on campus and help us work through our problems together, rather than
fiddling while the campus divides.
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