MONTREAL — A Concordia University student with the school’s largest student organization has reached a settlement after alleging she was the victim of degrading sexist and racist remarks.
“As someone who was working on the case, that it affected me this much,” began Sarah Lu, a McGill University psychology student who worked on the settlement with the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations.
“I can’t imagine how much it affected Mei Ling to read these things about herself.”
“Mei Ling” is the made-up name the victim used in the aftermath of a situation that erupted last spring.
She had been voted into a position at the Arts and Sciences Federation of Associations.
She was working on a public computer at the ASFA headquarters when she said she stumbled across a Facebook conversation on a page left open.
She said the chat made repeated racist and sexual references to her.
“The saddest part is that the people I did tell, and I did tell people around me that this was going on,” Ling said.
“They totally ignored it.”
She filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission in March.
A Concordia spokesperson told Global News that the issue lies between the woman and AFSA and its members, not the university.
The two AFSA executives named in the complaint have since left their posts and the university.
The scenario caused enough controversy at the university that the student body voted to deny the two men Ling accused of their honorariums, a sum of money that typically is awarded to an AFSA executive after their mandate ends.
AFSA now has different leadership, and its membership has acknowledged there was a problem.
“We had ignored a lot of the warning signs, a lot of the calls for help,” said Mariah Gillis, a Vice President.
“We had a toxic environment that wasn’t a safe place for women or minorities to be in.”
The settlement terms are confidential.
There are still two complaints pending against the two men individually.
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