06/04/2020
Dear President Lachemi and Denise Campbell,
We have been quiet, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been watching. We did not want to have to repeat history. We were cautiously hopeful that the organizing and activism of groups like CSSDP-Ryerson and individuals like co-founder of BLC-Ryerson and Ryerson alumni Josh Lamers would motivate you to do the right thing. We hoped the flood of support for the call to end your partnership with Toronto Police Services bringing special constables onto campus, and to release the results the Anti-Black Racism Climate Review completed almost a year ago, would be enough for you. Yet, we arrive here again, because it is clear that you will operate on lies, deceit and do not care about Black lives on your campus.
How do you publicly claim to recognize the impact of anti-Black racism while you continue to deploy anti-Black tactics to suffocate us and stamp out Black radical work on campus? First you bring cops into our classrooms back in Winter 2018, then in the Fall of 2018 you pre-think and align with Doug Ford’s Anti-Activist Gag Order Directive to punish student activists like us who speak on and radically organize against injustices on campus, and NOW you invite cops back to our campus full time.
Why do we always have to come back to these streets to do the labour of being your moral compass? Where are all these social justice values that you claim are at the heart of Ryerson, because at this point that must be quite the frozen appendage based on this move. Black people in Toronto makeup 61% of cases where police used force that resulted in death. The names and deaths of individuals like Regis Korchinski-Paquet and D'Andre Campbell, are not to be invoked for your tokenization—you as an institution are meant to do something to align with ensuring that Black people have our freedom. You are meant to honour them, not hollow out Black outrage for your institutional public relation announcements.
Your recent public statement completely ignores the university’s implication in the chronic problem of anti-Blackness. You mention how “members of Black communities have their lives senselessly taken” while you “senselessly” put our lives, safety and wellbeing at risk on our campus. We don’t attend university to get carded on campus and in our classrooms. We shouldn’t have to deal with the fears of being fatally shot during Frosh week or end up in the criminal justice system because of the carceral connection you are constructing on campus. In the same statement you also say “it is times like this that we all need to reinforce, in thought and action, our commitment to our values” but with the long standing relationship of the university with Toronto Police Services and getting in bed with Ford, you have proven to us that the supposed values of Ryerson university do nothing for Black life on campus.
When we forced you to end the partnership with Toronto Police Services in 2018, you lead us to believe that we would at least not have to worry about this kind of police presence on campus. This didn’t take away from our issues with the pre-existing over policing and the hordes of security personnel swirling around our campus and harassing us. But now we see your priorities and we are outraged with the speed in which Ryerson University is capable of bringing special constables to our campus, while making no forward momentum in creating courses/programs in Black Studies.
On September 09, 2019 in a statement announcing the decision to bring special constables on campus, Denise Campbell claimed that the Ryerson Security department will continue further consultations with community members and include recommendations put forward from the Anti-Black Racism Campus Climate Review. But no further consultations were carried out with community members; especially those who are most impacted by the indolent decision. The Anti-Black Racism Climate Review was supposed to be released September 2019 but here we are in June 2020, still demanding for the release of the climate review. So what recommendations did you include? What were the actual results of the report, let alone the recommendations, and why are they being withheld for almost a year?
Let’s also be real about these fraudulent consultations: the consultations were merely asking community members to choose between three evils. Participants were asked to choose between more security guards, only special constables or a mixture of security guards and special constables. There was no option to discuss exploring actual alternatives that do not reinforce anti-Blackness and harm on our campus. Black residents in Toronto are 20 times more likely to be shot dead by the police than white residents but yet you believe that bringing special constables on our campus will make it safer? It is apparent that your “safety plan” is more concerned with making largely white people feel safe and protected while you blatantly disregard Black lives, safety and well-being on an already anti-Black campus. But also, didn’t the university years ago start a whole process on rethinking campus security and safety that was meant to centre social justice and not causing harm, and didn’t that get shut down after Denise Campbell was hired?
We also can’t help but discuss the role of the Office of the Vice-President, Equity and Community Inclusion, and Vice-President Denise O’Neil Green, in bringing special constables to this institution. It is their duty and mandate to address equity, diversity, inclusion and systemic issues on our campus but again they are complacent in the face of matters that gravely affect Black students on our campus. Over and over again, their involvement seems to do nothing but reproduce harm for Black people. It is both unsurprising and laughable that ECI’s contribution was to say, “make the cops on campus Black” as an intervention. They have no problem having Black people be the overseer of other Black people, and wield the violence of white supremacy against other Black people.
Everyday we hear from Black students at Ryerson university and we are all in pain, suffocating; we are angry, enraged, frustrated, and exhausted not only because of the recent turn of events around the world but from the persistent anti-Black racism that we’ve been experiencing and continue to experience in this institution. WE DO NOT WANT CONSULTATIONS. We are done with these useless and never ending processes undercut substantive work for Black students on campus.
We demand the following:
End the agreement with Toronto Police Services immediately, and make an open commitment to never partnering again. We also demand that you make the terms of the agreement public, as well as the individual involved in brokering the deal. We need to know what you were trying to do, and who was trying to put us in harm's way.
Release the results of the Anti-Black Racism Climate Review immediately, and then release a plan that falls in line with any recommendations in that report as well as any report relevant to the issue of anti-Black racism. If you can pen these poorly thought posts during the COVID pandemic, then you can provide us information on our Black reality.
Address the already existing over-policing state on campus through the re-introduction of a committee of critical players to create and implement a holistic campus safety plan embedded in protecting communities already vulnerable to white supremacy. This should include student organizers like ourselves, CSSDP-Ryerson, and staff and faculty who are actually embedded in an abolitionist politic.
That long term support and care plan for Black community members at Ryerson be created and implemented. This is to deal with the current devastation in communities around the world and locally. This should include, but is not limited to, deadline extensions, academic accommodation, dedicated funding for Black student initiatives and reduction of the fall semester tuition fees.
Let us be clear. We are not playing games. We will show up in these streets for our lives here. This is our warning to you. We do not need another listening space, another meeting, phone call, or report. We need you to take the knee of this institution off our necks, and finally do the things Black students, staff, faculty, and the broader community have asked for repeatedly.
In rage,
The Black Liberation Collective-Ryerson
References
On September 09, 2019 in a statement announcing the decision to bring special constables on campus
https://www.ryerson.ca/community-safety-security/news/2019/09/upcoming-changes-to-ryerson-community-safety-and-security/
Recent public statement (referring to President Lachemi’s Recent statement)
https://scontent-yyz1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/101424791_572893336680134_9016434937665945600_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&_nc_sid=110474&_nc_ohc=whiR9hs4DmMAX_YFsRi&_nc_ht=scontent-yyz1-1.xx&oh=f077b40904af6308759dd608287cf9c0&oe=5EFF84CC
https://www.facebook.com/CSSDPRyerson/photos/a.235006333802171/572893333346801/?type=3&theater
Black people in Toronto makeup 61% of cases where police used force that resulted in death
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/10/toronto-black-residents-more-likely-shot-dead-ontario-human-rights-commission-report?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR1J7clVwpb5CH-8PAcjOy1ZYN22lOqT1aGb9d120GtOgtbBoAt_SwCrYAI
The report from Ontario Human Rights Commission
http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/public-interest-inquiry-racial-profiling-and-discrimination-toronto-police-service/collective-impact-interim-report-inquiry-racial-profiling-and-racial-discrimination-black %20summary
Regis Korchinski-Paquet and
https://www.cp24.com/news/protesters-in-downtown-toronto-demand-answers-in-death-of-regis-korchinski-paquet-1.4961615
D'Andre Campbell
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/brampton-shooting-d-andre-campbell-1.5527245
