As George Brown College is expected to introduce a mandatory, self-directed module on anti-racism this month, student leaders shared their viewpoints on the college’s current Anti-Racism Action Plan with The Dialog. 

The Office of Anti-Racism, Equity and Human Rights Services (OAREHRS) at GBC released the college’s long-awaited Anti-Racism Action Plan for 2022-2024 on March 7 of this year. 

The Action Plan announced a number of deliverables, including introducing a mandatory Anti-Racism 101 program for staff in April, quarterly workshops, events, and facilitated dialogues to support anti-racism starting from May, and a microsite which will serve as a resource repository in September of this year.  

The college also plans on making Anti-Racism 101 a mandatory part of orientation for students starting from September. 

Upon reviewing the released Anti-Racism Action Plan, newly elected Director of Education and Equity Angeline Nijmeh and Director of Student Experience Simran Malhotra at the Student Association of George Brown College (SAGBC), discussed the opportunities and challenges related to the college’s anti-racism work. 

In exclusive interviews with The Dialog, both Nijmeh and Malhotra expressed that the college still lags far behind in making GBC students aware of the work being done and presenting engaging ways for them to actively take part in the process. 

Both directors said that the potential of raising awareness and educating students using social media channels remains massively underutilized by the college. 

“As of now, I haven’t seen any Instagram account related directly to the college’s Anti-Racism work,” Malhotra said. 

Nijmeh, on the other hand, thinks that the current Action Plan itself failed to address some core issues related to Equality, Diversion and Inclusion (EDI) work in the context of GBC. 

Nijmeh, who identifies as a racialized person, said that one of the biggest issues disproportionately affecting racialized students is the significant disparity in tuition fees between domestic and international students. 

The majority of international students are from racialized groups, she added. 

“You have a 31-page document (released Action Plan), and not one of those pages discusses financial disparity. Someone could argue that international tuition fees are not a race issue, and yet when I talked to racialized students at the college, this is the first issue that was brought up,” Nijmeh said. 

“I’m pleased with the initiatives that are being taken in terms of the announced workshops and training, but financial disparity is the elephant in the room. Huge disparity in tuition is a significant barrier to achieving EDI,” she elaborated. 

Nijmeh also thinks that it may be worthwhile to look into the extent of the independence and liberties that the Office of Anti-Racism is granted in facilitating real change, and on making sure that there is no conflict of interest between OAREHRS and the college when it comes to putting tuition disparity and other important systemic issues on the table. 

“They may be very limited in what they can do. It’s not the fault of the staff of OAREHRS, but just the way the institution is set up. It could be that offering workshops is the extent of what they can do, anything more could be beyond their scope,” Nijmeh stated. 

“I’m curious to know more about their scope,” she added. 

Nijmeh also notes that systemic racism and inequalities have political components to them, and believes that OAREHRS needs to be bold and have the capacity to deal with issues that are political in nature. This may involve extending its strategies to include lobbying and reaching out to politicians to make a fundamental impact.  

In addition, Nijmeh also said that the released Action Plan did not delve into areas related to healing racial trauma and mental health, and points out that a self-directed module may not be interactive.  

Anti-racism work is about facilitating interactions between different groups of people, she stated. 

“If workshops are not super engaging, it could actually lead to more resentment and become one more chore for students to do,” she added. 

Nijmeh hopes that the training offered will include facilitating conversations among students, storytelling, sharing experiences, healing, safe spaces, and ways of improving mental health. 

Another issue that Nijmeh sees in the Action Plan is that it reads like a very proper, corporate, legal document, which students could find very difficult to read or relate to. 

“It seems like a lot of jargon and language that doesn’t feel authentic. And I’m saying that as a racialized student. The document is very repetitive and could be much more concise. We want to see their philosophy, why they are doing what they are doing,” Nijmeh said. 

“In the first page, the president talks about addressing systemic racism, although the rest of the document does not discuss or identify any systemic issues that need to be addressed.” 

Nijmeh also discussed the importance of involving students in determining the strategies and action plan regarding Anti-Racism work at the college. 

“Real change in EDI has to take place at a grassroots level and it has to come from the students, and not in a top-down way from the institution,” Nijmeh said. 

She further stated that social media accounts of the college miss the mark in playing a role in educating students about Anti-Racism work in a relatable way.  

“I saw one post which was simply a banner that said “Say No to Racism.” If we want to get students involved, the content needs to be more relatable to their lived experience. Students have such a busy life that something has to be really engaging to capture their attention,” she added. 

Both Nijmeh and Malhotra, believe that the Office of Anti-Racism should either hire or collaborate with students with a large following on social media to create engaging, educational and relatable content on Anti-Racism. 

They expressed the need for the Office of Anti-Racism to actively work with students to get more students involved in Anti-Racism work. The pair intends to initiate communications with the college to explore such opportunities. 

Emphasizing the lack of awareness among the GBC student community, Malhotra said that she didn’t know that there was an Action Plan, even more than a month after it was released.  

“The Office of Anti-Racism has much more access to classrooms and professors than the SA. They are part of the college. If they would take even five minutes from every professor’s class to very briefly talk about the Anti-Racism Action Plan and its deliverables, students would actually come to know that there is an Action Plan and explore how they may get involved in the process and participate,” Malhotra said. 

“No student will read a 31-page document. But if someone could sum up the Anti-Racism document in a short reel on social media, many students will pay attention,” she added.  

In an email to The Dialog, Dhwani Bhalavat, SA Director of Operations stated that she didn’t have any communications with the Office of Anti-Racism in her previous term on collaborating on Anti-Racism work. 

The SA would love to work with OAREHRS to implement Anti-Racism strategies at the college in the future, she stated. 

Click here to see the full Action Plan along with other deliverables.