“What is happening at the University of Ottawa is not about white folk’s right to access reclaimed verbiage by communities outside of their own, nor about academic freedom, as we have been so led to believe. What we are collectively bearing witness to is about power; namely who can access it, and who must succumb to it,” writes Shadé Edwards, a second-year common law student at the University of Ottawa.
“It was very emotional for me as I had never before heard so much appreciation for non-Indigenous presence,” said Polish retiree Feliks Welfeld.
The University of Ottawa’s president and vice-chancellor Jacques Frémont responded early this morning to the recent incident of a professor uttering the ‘N-word’ in an online lecture. The professor had been suspended since early October, and a group of professors had written a letter denouncing her treatment at the hands of the U of O administration.
“How do we make progress from here at the University of Ottawa? If by terming it as a good crisis, Jacques Frémont is going to make transformational changes in the U of O landscape, I am all behind him, but if it is going to be talk, PR, and no action, then his legacy will be harshly judged by all generations,” writes Rony Fosting an international student at the University of Ottawa.
“How are you protecting me—how are you protecting us? I implore all of you to interrogate your activism: who have you been leaving behind? Who have you failed to hold space for? In your silence and complacency, whose lives have you decided no longer matter?,” writes Shadé Edwards a second-year law student at the University of Ottawa in the common law section.
If you are a settler in this country who has not yet seen the Netflix documentary There’s Something In the Water, you should stop reading and watch it immediately.
Millions of people have demanded that racial bigotry be extracted from important institutions like the police and health-care system, but how can we dismantle systematic racism in the long-term? Let’s look at our education systems.
Yvan Mongo, a Black hockey player on the University of Ottawa men’s hockey team, along with his head coach, Patrick Grandmaitre, has created a special club called “Mongo’s Brave Buddies” that aims to help young BIPOC hockey players.
A few months ago, I read former US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power’s memoir, The Education of an Idealist. In it, she asked a question that has stuck with me since: “What is the nature of individual responsibility in the face of injustice?” writes second-year University of Ottawa Law student Nemee Bedar in a letter to the editor.
University of Ottawa president Jacques Frémont has been reappointed for a second term, which means he’ll lead the school until July 2026. The decision was approved at a Board of Governors meeting on Monday evening.
