“Do you feel a sense of belonging as a Black student at SMU? Do you feel valued?”
The Black Inclusion Strategy Working Group at Saint Mary’s University asked Black students, staff and faculty these and other questions while compiling the first-ever study on the barriers faced by SMU’s Black community and their experiences of racial discrimination in their academic and working lives at the university.
“There’s never, ever been a study done on Black students, faculty, staff—or even just Black students, which is really shocking, because there are over 600,” Rachel Zellars, BISWG member and senior researcher at SMU, tells The Coast. “They are a big chunk of the international student community, which means they pay a ton of money and tuition into that university, that they’re incredibly valuable to the university’s survival, and yet they’ve been wholly ignored.”
Documenting the current situation is an important precursor to changing it. “We need data,” says Zellars, “first, because institutions, banks, governments and universities won’t and can’t do anything without data. And second, because it holds up a mirror and disallows the university from providing a spin or a counter-narrative that would be untruthful.”
Now, after two years of research and analysis, the BISWG have published the report “Understanding the Challenges of the Black Community at Saint Mary’s University” on Wednesday, Oct. 9. It found evidence of “systemic racism and failed commitments to [the] Black community at SMU,” says the release, including commitments made to students, faculty and staff.
The report finds one example is SMU’s abandoned institutional commitment to hiring tenured and senior Indigenous and Black faculty, a promise outlined in the faculty union’s collective agreement.
A second example is the ongoing lack of resources dedicated to Black students on SMU’s campus. Despite representing the largest visible minority group at SMU, Black students don’t have a dedicated space on campus, there are no Black mental health support workers or therapists on campus, and three Black Student Advisors have resigned in the past three years. Meanwhile, fellow Halifax universities Dalhousie and Mount Saint Vincent University “both have robust supports for Black students, including long-standing advisors, targeted supports, and set-aside spaces for Black students,” reads the BISWG’s report.
In 2020, SMU’s president, Robert Summerby-Murray, became an early participant in the development of what would become the Scarborough Charter on Anti-Black Racism and Black Inclusion in Canadian Higher Education. SMU signed the charter in 2022, committing to “redressing anti-Black racism and fostering Black inclusion” through the charter’s guiding principles of Black flourishing, inclusive excellence, mutuality, and accountability.
That same year, the Black Inclusion Strategy Working Group was set up. If all this feels like progress, the view from 2024 is less optimistic. Here are some of the BISWG report’s findings:
- “All student participants reported personal experiences, rather than second-hand accounts of racism on campus,” and “many students expressed a concern regarding the frequent use of racially derogatory language on campus, including the ‘N’ word.”
- “Students also noted that the ‘N’ word was used by students and professors in classrooms under the pretext of spirited debate, free speech, or ‘racial inclusion.’”
- “Black students also stated that they had no idea how to seek recourse after experiencing anti-black violence, discrimination, or harassment from faculty or students, contributing to feelings of isolation and poor mental health.”
- “Black students, faculty and staff reported, as a norm, having been subjected to racist comments and behaviours on the SMU campus.”
- “The ‘surprising lack of Black professors’ at SMU was mentioned by most of the African students who indicated that this absence made them, at times, question their own value and belonging within the University.”
From November 2022 to August 2024, the BISWG interviewed 80 Black participants at SMU: 68 students, four faculty members and eight staff members. The group analyzed their responses, and two weeks ago, the final draft was released to be shared and reviewed by the SMU community to enact meaningful change.
The BISWG was created, in part, for this very reason. Their mandate is to gather data on the representation, experiences and achievements of Black faculty, staff, students and alumni within the SMU community and then to release this analyzed data as a public report to “inform and guide” initiatives and policies at SMU, including a published Black Inclusion Strategy. The BISWG is meant to move SMU towards meeting its institutional and charter commitments, and identifying and addressing additional needs and challenges faced by the Black community at SMU.
Membership in the BISWG has changed over the past two years, but consistent members include Dr. Harvi Millar, Dr. Rachel Zellars, Mark Moffett and Deborah Brothers-Scott. Beginning in April 2024, Topaz Nnani, president of SMU’s African Student Society, and Jaiden Kariuki MacDonald, president of SMU’s Black Student Society, reviewed and provided extensive feedback towards the final report.
The report begins by explaining SMU’s historical location within Nova Scotia, which is “home to the only group of Black Canadians with seven or more generations of ancestry in the nation: the African Nova Scotians…who inhabited the original 52 land-based Black communities and whose histories, legacies, and contributions have enriched Mi’kma’ki for over 400 years.
“African Nova Scotians and Black Canadians in Nova Scotia, together, compose the largest racialized/visible minority population in the province and the entire Atlantic region.”
The report provides the data.
Within the SMU community of 6,400 undergraduate and graduate students, there are 517 Black undergraduate and 65 Black graduate students. As such, “Black students make up the largest cohort of all racialized/visible minority students on campus,“ at 10% of the undergraduate group and 8.5% of the graduate group.
The report compares this with Canada’s Black population, which was 4.3% of the total population according to 2021 census data from Statistics Canada, and Nova Scotia’s Black population, which was 3%.
“Despite this large demographic, Black students at SMU are not represented by a robust, proportionate support network of Black faculty, senior leaders, and staff,” reads the report. Black faculty are under-represented at SMU, at 2% of all faculty members, totalling seven positions, despite Black faculty making up between 3% and 5% of all faculty members on average across Canada.
“Despite its commitments as a founding member and lead signatory to the [Scarborough Charter], SMU continues to house the smallest number and proportion of Black faculty of all three major universities in Halifax.” Considering this and the fact that “recently, SMU’s third Black Student Advisor in three years resigned after four months and after a 14-month long absence on campus,” the report concludes that:
“The ongoing absence of Black decision-makers and leadership, despite SMU’s sizable Black student body…ensures that SMU cannot ‘commit to promoting intersectional Black flourishing’ as outlined in the charter.”
The report includes findings based on interviews with four faculty and eight staff. Some of these findings are:
- “All Black faculty members reported discriminatory experiences with senior colleagues and/or white students.”
- “Black female faculty members reported experiences of grave harassment from white students in which support from security was requested and provided by SMU.”
- “All [staff] respondents reported experiences with racism at SMU. One employee said that they experience ‘subtle racism daily.’ Examples include being told by colleagues and managers that ‘you speak well’ or that ‘your English is very good!’”
- “The majority of Black employees shared that they feel Black employees are not valued or appreciated at SMU.”
The report ends with recommendations on how to make SMU a meaningful, inclusive and welcoming space for Black people, based on what students, staff and faculty shared.
These are some:
- “Create a dedicated, on-campus space for Black students at SMU, in consultation with the presidents of all three organizations supporting Black students.”
- “Hire Black counsellors who are trauma-informed and Black-centered; provide training to all campus counsellors in decolonizing/culturally informed approaches to care for Black and racialized students.”
- “Communicate a zero-tolerance policy for antiblack racial discrimination and harassment at SMU. This messaging must: Come from the President’s office; define racial discrimination and harassment; and clearly state consequences for such actions.”
Find all 16 recommendations in the report here. “We’re just at the starting line now,” says Zellars. “It’s going to be the work of the university, of course, but also those of us who are stakeholders to keep pushing to say, ‘Here’s the data, here are the recommendations, let’s get to work.’
“It’ll be a bit tricky because [SMU president Summerby-Murray] leaves in June of 2025 and then we’ll have a new president in—so we will have to be very vigilant about holding [both] accountable to this report.”
The purpose of the report and its release is to share its findings and recommendations with the SMU community.
On Tuesday Oct. 15, 80 students came out for a community event organized by three student groups on campus to hear and discuss the report’s findings with their peers and BISWG members. That afternoon, CUPE 3912, representing part-time faculty at SMU, stated their support of the BISWG and its report here.
The union writes that “given the findings in the report identify a consistent and continued lack of resources and supports for Black students and faculty/staff, and given the findings indicate a wider institutional indifference or unwillingness from SMU to address what are embedded structural forces and issues, we call on [SMU] to respond to these findings and begin immediately to address and implement the recommendations in the report.”
Cathy Conrad, president of the SMU Faculty Union, attended Tuesday’s event.
“There were students in tears; it was emotional,” says Conrad. “There was a lot of anger and legitimate frustration about actions that aren’t being taken or mistakes that haven’t been addressed—or that the recommendations being put forward by this report are being sat on when some students are in immediate crisis.”
SMU president Summerby-Murray was invited to attend the event but wasn’t there. Margaret Murphy, associate vice president of external affairs, and Tom Brophy, senior director of student affairs, were there. The Coast asked why Summerby-Murray didn’t attend, and in response, Murphy emailed a statement saying “members of administration attended the meeting with the express purpose of listening and conveying the information that was shared, including sharing it with the Executive Management Group,” which Summerby-Murray is part of.
Before the event but after the release of the report, Zellars appeared on CBC’s Mainstreet on Friday, Oct. 11. The host read a statement from SMU’s administration that disavowed the report as being finalized, calling the group’s work “ongoing” and that the document and associated public presentations “represent the views of one member.””
The Coast requested an interview with Summerby-Murray to explain the university’s response to the report’s release. The school declined, but Murphy issued the following statement:
“We look forward to reviewing in detail the report and recommendations of the Black Inclusion Strategy Working Group. Saint Mary’s University is committed to supporting our Black community.”
Murphy confirmed that, yes, this means the report released Oct. 9, “is final as the [BISWG] members say it is, and the university will review it.”
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This article appears in Oct 1 – Nov 6, 2024.