Contracts are close to expiring for this year’s residence fellows and, despite a failed bid to unionize, some are coming forward with concerns about the way management handles safety issues.
Zoe Todd, a third-year journalism student and residence fellow, said she had to wait months for action from housing when disruptions on her floor reached a dangerous level.
Todd was a returning residence fellow this year, and said she loved her job the first year.
But early in her second year she said her floor was vandalized, with personal attacks written in permanent marker on her door.
Despite repeated incidents of vandalism, cyberbullying, aggressive personal attacks, intimidation, and verbal harassment, Todd said her concerns were continually downplayed by her manager and the housing department.
“Don’t take it personally, you just have a difficult floor,” was their reaction, according to Todd. But the behaviour continued to escalate, quickly becoming out of control and ending in a floor-wide brawl in November 2013.
“The way that housing treats you makes you question yourself. They made me feel like it was my fault that these things were happening,” she said.
Director of housing David Sterritt declined to comment.
Former residence fellows Shelisa Klassen and Miranda Moores, who resigned in December 2013, said they faced a similar situation when they complained about threatening behaviour coming from a male co-worker earlier in the year.
It took months of reports and meetings with managers to have their concerns taken seriously, they said.
Klassen and Moores said they felt isolated and scared, and were continually told by managers to calm down and not worry about it.
“In some capacity it makes sense to tell people to stay calm. But you get too far into that mentality and you miss the things that are really important,” Moores said.
Klassen and Moores were organizers of a drive in January that would have seen residence fellows unionize. The bid failed.
Robert Arnold, a fourth-year political science student and current residence fellow, said he was warned by a manager that talking about unions could result in him being fired.
An email sent by Sterritt at the time described the drive as a “sales pitch” and encouraged residence fellows to consider the cost of union dues.
The culture and training in residence is part of the reason action by management is so slow, according to Moores, Todd, and Klassen.
They said residence fellows are encouraged to practice “rational detachment” and not take situations personally. There are also strict rules around gossiping among residence fellows.
Moores said she was verbally disciplined for “gossiping” when she advised Todd to talk to Equity Services about her situation.
In an incident in 2011, Alberto Martel, a residence fellow at the time, said he felt blamed by housing for an incident that happened on his floor.
After asking some visitors on his floor to quiet down, he was assaulted by a group of non-residence students to the extent of needing x-rays taken at the hospital.
He said he was given five days off to recover, but then asked to return to work. Martel said he eventually resigned.
Sterritt, housing director, said he “had no recollection” of the incident.
“It’s unbelievable,” Martel said. “I think there’s better ways to deal with this. They need more clarity and transparency.”
