Partway through semester one of online school in November, Maddison Fal, a GBC game programming student, missed the midterm for an elective because of a COVID test. Fortunately, this elective was offered for a couple of periods, and the teacher allowed her to take the midterm with another class. Arriving in that Blackboard Collaborate classroom,…
At the end of September 2020, George Brown College hired Jennifer Campeau as their first director of Indigenous initiatives. Ten months later, with no public notice, this position has now sat unfilled for over two months after Campeau left the college for a job at Rogers Communications in April. The director of Indigenous initiatives position…
This year was supposed to be easier. When people can’t see you it’s harder for them to misgender you. Lie. People won’t assume your pronouns based on your voice. Lie. Online it will be easier to correct people. Lie. It was all going to get better though because, through the work of student advocates and…
In 2014, teams of students and faculty dressed up as toilets and paraded around campus, hanging posters up in every bathroom they could find and sharing information with everyone with whom they crossed paths. The words ‘FREE TO PEE’, a call to provide gender-neutral bathroom facilities to the George Brown College (GBC) community, could be…
Two weeks after OPSEU Locals 556 and 557, the unions representing George Brown College’s (GBC) faculty and support staff, sent a letter to the GBC board of governors criticizing the college’s anti-racism plan, they have yet to receive a response. But that hasn’t come as a surprise to Local 557 president Megan Carter. “I definitely…
On April 21, 2021, OPSEU Locals 556 and 557, the unions representing George Brown College’s (GBC) faculty and support staff, sent a letter to the GBC board of governors forcefully criticizing the college’s anti-racism efforts. “We are outlining these concerns because we are proud to be a part of a college that has been a…
In 2018, Loni Frank, a faculty member at the Child and Youth Care program, was notified that her classroom would be moving. As she stood outside the new classroom with her books, pulley cart, and a handful of her students, she asked a security personnel to let her in. They said no as she did…
Since being named George Brown College’s director of anti-racism, equity, and human rights services, Jennifer Grant has spent the last four weeks transitioning part-time into her new position. “I think the work that needs to be done when we’re thinking about anti-racism is always transformational work. We’re always looking at this journey towards a reimagined…
George Brown College has announced that Jennifer Grant will be moving into the new position of director of anti-racism, equity, and human rights services at a part-time capacity starting March 1, 2020. Grant’s position was created in the summer of 2020 alongside the director of Indigenous initiatives to satisfy objective two of GBC’s anti-racism strategy…
Last Wednesday, George Brown College (GBC) student Charlie Reynolds was allegedly harassed by a GBC security guard at St. James campus while using a men’s bathroom. “George Brown College you guys wanna explain why a female security guard just followed me into the men’s bathroom to threaten me to get out because she didn’t believe…
In the summer of 2020, amid a revigorated international discussion about racism, George Brown College (GBC) announced the creation of the Anti-Racism Advisory Committee as part of its commitments to fighting anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism at the college. But now, over six months since its inception, the committee has only met twice and no date…
In November 2020, Student Association of George Brown College (SAGBC) representative Robby Thompson spoke up about the need for online learning systems to display students’ correct names and pronouns. In December 2020, George Brown College (GBC) said they will make the necessary changes by the end of February. But now, three months later, GBC has…
