The Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) filed a complaint with the university’s discrimination and harassment prevention services after receiving numerous hateful messages.
This occurred after a story was published in the student newspaper, the Ryersonian, March 13. The story said two journalism students were turned away from an event by the Racialised Students’ Collective (RSC) because they were white.
The RSC said this was not the case and they were turned away because the event was a safe space for students to talk without being judged.
The RSU regularly holds events that it said are intended as “safe spaces” through the RSC and other campus equity groups such as the Centre for Women and Trans People.
Trevor Hewitt and Julia Knope, two Ryerson journalism students, attempted to attend an event hosted by the RSC on March 11 to cover it for a class assignment.
The RSC explained to the students that the meeting was a safe space for marginalized persons and that they could not be there to report on it.
“They showed up the day of and requested an interview and our co-ordinator said that this isn’t the place for it but that they would get in touch if they wanted an interview afterwards,” said Pascale Diverlus, RSU vice-president (equity).
The Ryersonian published an article saying the students were not allowed into the event because they were white.
The article had 100,000 views over the weekend on its website after it was shared on Reddit as well as on several white supremacist websites.
The RSU and RSC also began to receive numerous emails containing hateful racist comments.
Diverlus said she could not count the number of messages and Facebook posts, especially those targeting the event co-ordinator.
In response to the attacks, the RSU has organized events to try to get students more educated on the topic of racism and to discuss the article, she said.
“We did an event on racism to open up that topic and talk about it a little bit more,” Diverlus said. “So we saw a bunch of the students come and talk a little bit about the article [and how] it has affected them . . . Students have kind of jumped on board with tackling this.”
First-year Ryerson journalism student John Lawless said he believes though the RSC shouldn’t have been attacked, the students should have been allowed in.
“They [weren’t] there to share their experiences, they [were] there to cover an event,” Lawless said. “It’s important to have events covered.”
Currently, Ryerson doesn’t have any official information policies on safe spaces.
Ryerson’s School of Journalism has no specific policy about student coverage of safe space events.
