The Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Task Force introduced a new framework for moving forward with anti-racism measures at UBC on Wednesday afternoon.
At a webinar held for faculty, staff, students and community members, Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Task Force (ARIE-TF) leaders reconvened to highlight key recommendations and lay out plans for moving into the implementation phase.
In April 2022, the ARIE-TF released its final report with over fifty recommendations to help address systemic racism at UBC.
The implementation stage will run under the Strategic Equity and Anti-Racism (StEAR) framework model, a strategy to develop the ARIE recommendations into measurable actions across the UBC Vancouver and UBC Okanagan campuses over the next five years.
The StEAR framework focuses on four domains: structural, curricular, compositional, and interactional change.
“The framework really acts to align, unify and mobilize our EDI priorities, but also not lose the nuances of each of these plans that require us to think specifically about the different communities and the different barriers, and therefore the different solutions that we need,” said UBC Associate VP Equity and Inclusion Arig al Shaibah.
ARIE-TF committee chairs — Indigenous, Blackness, people of colour, students, staff and faculty — highlighted their recommendations, such as developing recruitment and retention initiatives for IBPOC faculty and staff, developing IBPOC-specific sponsorship programs, and reducing the burden of teaching anti-racism on IBPOC students and faculty.
Committee chairs also noted that while some anti-racist measures are being implemented at UBC, there are issues with inadequacy and inconsistency that need to be resolved.
The StEAR framework has laid out a set of major guidelines that will inform the beginning of the implementation phase.
These include goals from setting institutional practices such as student demographic data collection, developing support for IBPOC community members, and providing faculty, staff and leadership with anti-racism training.
“We are creating this framework to make sense of what we’ve heard and to ensure that we are taking a really strategic and intentional approach to the next step of implementation,” al Shaibah said.
Dr. Donna Kurtz, chair of the Indigenous Committee, shared her experience of working on these recommendations after the remains of 215 children were found at the former site of Kamloops Indian Residential School.
“The reality of why we joined this task force became more important, and why we put ourselves in potentially unsafe positions made the collective work of the task force more meaningful and more hopeful to expose and prioritize the experiences and wisdom of the students, staff and faculty from both campuses,” she said.
Lerato Chondoma, chair of the Blackness Committee, echoed similar feelings about working on the task force against the backdrop of police violence against Black people in the U.S. and Canada.
“I will end again with my enduring message to Black students, staff, faculty and executive leadership at UBC. You are always seen, you always belong. You’re always building a legacy. Your history matters so much, your existence matters. Be unapologetically Black every day, because you matter,” she said.
At the UBC leadership level, implementation is underway, with al Shaibah set to run a series of educational sessions about equitable and anti-racist leadership for all UBC senior administrators this term.
This spring, StEAR will move forward by releasing an official roadmap, alongside establishing an advisory committee and baselines to assess ongoing efforts.
“Lots of things have been done in different units and departments and programs, and now it’s up to us to pull that information together and let the community see the work that has been implemented,” said VP Students Ainsley Carry.
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