Queen's University students at the Smith School of Business are using social media to share stories of racism at their school. Photos courtesy of Meena Waseem (left) and Kelly Weiling Zou (right).
Bearing witness to the historic reckoning with systemic racism, and amplifying dialogue to drive change that delivers on the promise of racial equality.
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In only seven days, Zou’s Instagram account has amassed nearly 9,000 followers and inspired students at the York University Schulich Business school, the University of British Columbia, Western University, McGill, and more to create their own pages. They all follow social media accounts at top U.S. institutions like Harvard (@BlackatHarvardLaw) and Cornell (@BlackatCornell) that have been doing the same.Stories from Queen’s commerce range from bad—only white students getting picked to participate in business case competitions—to worse—Asian female students avoiding a male peer “known for having an Asian fetish.”“As a white presenting Indigenous student I have been privy to numerous conversations where I have overheard my fellow classmates talk about how Indigenous people’s lives are worth less than the company’s bottom line. How we all get handouts from the government. How we should all ‘get over’ the trauma of residential schools,” one anonymous post says.Do you have any tips about racism on campus? Send an email to anya.zoledziowski@vice.com or reach out on Signal at (780) 668-4528.
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Zou has her own stories too. During her first year, a white student used the N-word and repeatedly taunted Zou’s Chinese and Singaporean identities. Zou was also part of a group chat in which white students made fun of a brown substitute professor. In screenshots obtained by VICE News, students make fun of the man’s English and compare him to Jabba the Hutt and the Pokemon, Muk. Another message says “#notmyprofessor.” Zou was also accused of gatekeeping by a white man after she put a call out for racialized people, especially Black and Indigenous folks, to share stories of environmental racism. VICE News obtained screenshots from that conversation as well.“In my first year in Queen's commerce I experienced so much racism and microaggressions to the point that I couldn't believe it,” Zou said. Racism was so frequent, Zou started skipping classes after her second year to avoid it.Zou started Stolen by Smith to hold the school’s faculty and administration accountable; she and other racialized students want to see concrete measures taken that will make the school’s environment more inclusive. A spokesperson for the school said they support Zou’s account and are taking steps to improve conditions for racialized students, including more training for staff.Five racialized current and former business students from Queen’s and the University of Alberta, including Zou, spoke with VICE News about their experiences. They said fratty, white, and rich environments often encouraged by professors and administration have excluded racialized students from reaping the benefits of campus clubs as well as professional and academic opportunities. The students and alumni said expensive tuition, particularly at Queen’s where one year of business school costs about $16,288 CAD (the average cost for a year in undergrad business school across Canada is about $6,900 in comparison) also ends up limiting who can attend."Most students at Smith, to put it bluntly, come from rich and white bubbles."
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Several incidents compounded to create a clique-y environment.Mohamed said she witnessed white students talk poorly about international students, saw a white male peer rap the N-word on Snapchat, and noticed how her white colleagues would treat white professors with more deference than professors who are visibly people of colour. To make matters worse, only one of Mohamed’s professors was Black and most of them were white, Mohamed said.Rahique Handoo, a 24-year-old who graduated from the University of Alberta School of Business in 2018, said she was stunned when she found one of her professors—a white woman—on Twitter liking and re-tweeting tweets from far-right media as well as posts about refugees and Muslim immigrants “coming here to steal Canada’s resources.”"Business school feels like a white space. It doesn’t feel like a space for us."
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