Brescia, King’s university colleges to implement working group’s anti-racism recommendations

King’s and Brescia university colleges in London, Ont., are committing to implement recommendations set out in a new anti-racism report released Monday.

The report marks the completion of the first phase of work by the King’s and Brescia Anti-Racism Working Group (KB-ARWG). It includes eight recommendations to address racism on campus and within the institutions.

King’s and Brescia are affiliated with Western University.

Part 1 involved a survey, while Part 2 will focus on one-on-one interviews amplifying narratives shared by “Black, Indigenous, racialized, and minoritized students and employees,” KB-ARWG said. Part 2 is underway and expected to be completed in 2022.

The Racial Climate Assessment Survey, conducted through Western’s Qualtrics from March 2 to 22, 2021, was completed by 401 participants, 188 from King’s, 134 from Brescia and 79 who chose not to identify their home campus.

The resulting recommendations aim to:

• “Acknowledge the prevalence of individual and institutional racism, and create channels for reporting and discussing racism for both students and employees.
• “Build a bold, durable, functional, and effective equity framework, with anti-racism as a core element.
• “Fully involve senior administrators in anti-racism as a project.
• “Build anti-racism into recruitment, hiring, retention, and promotion of faculty.
• “Audit curricula and pedagogies; create inclusive curricula and use culturally-sustaining pedagogies.
• “Decolonize the curriculum, and launch an intentional and focused Indigenization program under the leadership of Indigenous scholars, Elders, and organizations.
• “Educate and sensitize faculty, administrators, and staff in every unit that serves students and employees.
• “Audit and modify budgets, documents, policies, and practices to reflect awareness of implicit bias and to remedy exclusions.”

According to a joint statement from King’s University College President David Malloy and Brescia University College President Laurette Frederking, work on some of these recommendations is already underway.

“Other recommendations will take some time to implement. The work will be on-going,” they said.

“We have met with the co-leads of the KB-ARWG and agreed that the KB-ARWG will continue to exist in its current form, so that we can all be accountable for making changes on our campuses.”

The statement added that “as Catholic universities with a shared set of social justice values, Brescia and King’s are committed to continuing this important work.”

In addition to the recommendations, the report also highlighted major concerns at King’s and Brescia. The report stressed racism is an issue at both campuses and “the higher in the campus power structures we go, the less racial diversity there is.”

According to the survey results, 40 per cent of student respondents at King’s reported they are not taught by faculty of colour. At Brescia, that figure jumped to 73 per cent. One student respondent wrote, “I’ve only had one Black professor in my entire four years here.”

The report noted that “acts of covert racism such as jokes, slurs, micro-aggressions, intellectual put-downs, and so on, were more frequently witnessed or experienced” than instances of overt racism such as physical violence.

Lack of inclusivity was listed as a concern among both student and faculty respondents. Less than a third of respondents “felt there were safe institutional channels to report racism and seek redress.”

While many respondents agreed that racism is an issue at the schools, roughly a fifth were unsure, and another fifth felt that it was not an issue.

Additionally, the report stressed racism results in “very real trauma, exclusion, anger, alienation, and isolation.” The majority of respondents “support anti-racist actions such as awareness-raising about racism, curriculum change to reflect the history and achievements of people of colour, and hiring for diversity.”

The full report, They Think You Are Exaggerating”: A Report on Campus Racial Climate at King’s and Brescia, can be read online.

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