October 15th, 2015
Coast Salish Territories
Dear community members,
We, the RAGA Graduate and Undergraduate Student Networks, are writing to the larger community to provide an update regarding the University of British Columbia's attempts to forcefully relocate the RAGA Centre (Jack Bell Room 127).
For those who don’t already know, RAGA stands for Race, Autobiography, Gender and Age, and since 2008, has provided a unique space at UBC for racialized students and faculty, visiting scholars, scholars from other post-secondary institutions, as well as for representatives of various community organizations in the Vancouver Lower Mainland. It serves as a site for interdisciplinary critical race feminist research and scholarship, mentorship, networking, peer-support and community engagement.
The RAGA Student Networks were initiated in 2010 and housed in the RAGA Centre during the tenure of the RAGA Director, Dr. Sunera Thobani. Since the end of the RAGA Director’s tenure in 2013, the RAGA Advisory Committee has been on hiatus. The RAGA Student Networks stepped in to provide coordination and leadership of the Centre without any UBC administrative or financial support for RAGA Centre activities. For more information on the objectives and activities of the RAGA Student Networks see Appendix A attached to this letter.
Why we are writing this:
In light of events that took place over the summer (summarized below), we are at a critical moment in RAGA's and UBC's history and strongly feel the necessity of sharing with you where the RAGA Student Networks are at in order to remain transparent and accountable (and hopefully the University will do the same regarding matters concerning RAGA). This letter has the following objectives:
1) To let our supporters know that our lobbying stopped the eviction, at least for now;
2) To respond publicly to the Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice, and the Dean of Arts office regarding correspondence concerning the RAGA Centre;
3) To thank supporters for their solidarity and concern;
4) To outline our next steps and how you may support us.
We hope that by highlighting the struggles and stresses that we have had to experience over the last few months for our small designated space for a multiplicity of racialized students, that theunnecessary harm caused to racialized students by the colonial, neoliberal institution of the “University” becomes evident. We feel that it is important to archive this information not only within our own network, but also the broader community so that (much like many tensions arising from the uneasiness, messiness, and often times different forms of violence associated with the process of racialization) we can continue to hold institutions accountable. We hope to move forward with a better understanding of the relation to and role of RAGA at the University of British Columbia and in Vancouver.
Most importantly, this letter is to reassure our friends, supporters, allies and other interested parties that we currently continue to operate and use The RAGA Centre as we have in the past. We continue to resist efforts to dismiss, undermine, erase and misrepresent the RAGA Student Networks’ contributions and existence on the UBC campus. We also continue to hope for the opportunity to have meaningful, respectful consultations with the President’s Office, the Dean of Arts, the GRSJ and the Office of Equity and Inclusion with regards to the RAGA Centre space, in terms of its present and its future.
Summary of events of the last few months:
On March 30, 2015, the RAGA Student Networks were informed by the Assistant Dean of Arts of their intention to remove RAGA from the RAGA Centre in Jack Bell Room #127 and to relocate the Centre when a space was found on campus. This forced relocation was to take place immediately.
Not only was this notice of relocation done with no consultation with us and therefore was completely unexpected, and not only were we not given any explanation for the removal of the RAGA Student Networks from our Centre, the eviction order came while many RAGA students (particularly Indigenous & international students) were away in the summer. This meant we had little time and opportunity to discuss a collective response to our eviction. Those of us who were able to come together at short notice felt we had no choice but to comply with the Dean's demands. However, the alternative spaces offered to us did not take into consideration our request for space of equal or better suitability; instead, they were unacceptably inaccessible with regards to either disability or safety (i.e. were located in isolated parts of the campus).
In August, by way of an e-mail from the Dean’s Office, we learned that the Dean of Arts’ urgent attempts to forcibly remove the RAGA Student Networks from the Jack Bell building was in response to a request by the Institute of Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice (GRSJ) to accommodate recent hires of critical race faculty. After this finding, on August 2nd, the RAGA Student Networks sent a Call for Solidarity (see Appendix B attached) to the GRSJ in which we pointed out the irony of evicting RAGA, which has been the main site for critical race scholarship and events at UBC for over a decade, and which has long held as its key objective the setting up of a Critical Race Studies program at UBC, in order to reallocate the space for GRSJ critical race scholars.
In response, we received many letters of support. Among them was an email from the Director of GRSJ, Dr. Mary Bryson, stating that “[The GRSJ] would like you to know that we are fully in support of your request for an expression of solidarity in relation to the ‘notice of forced relocation’”. Dr. Bryson also stated in her response that the forced relocation”had/has no connection to the GRSJ or any recent critical race studies hires at the GRSJ. Further, they assure us that, “…I have contacted the Dean of Arts Office [...] to seek immediate assurance that there will be no ‘forced relocation’ imposed on the RAGA Graduate and Undergraduate Students’ Networks. This assurance was been provided to me by the Dean of Arts Office”.
Immediately after receiving this email from Dr. Bryson, the Dean of Arts, Gage Averill, responded to Dr. Bryson’s email, which he cc-ed to the RAGA Student Networks and several administrative individuals. In it he states emphatically that the removal of the RAGA Centre from Jack Bell Room 127 never originated from his office. Rather, he clarifies that, he had merely responded to pressures by the GRSJ that the RAGA Centre be relocated in order to free up the space. To substantiate his clarification, he attached email correspondences from Dr. Bryson to him as evidence, confirming that RAGA’s forced relocation came at the request of the GRSJ. In those attached correspondences, Dr. Bryson's emails to the Dean clearly state the RAGA space is required to house the new tenure-track hire in Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at GRSJ.
Upon finding out that GRSJ was both behind RAGA’s forced removal and seemingly in solidarity with RAGA keeping its Centre space, we, the RAGA Student Networks, wrote the GRSJ a Letter of Accountability (see Appendix C attached), expressing our disappointment at the lack of respect, consultation, and transparency. We made it clear we were appalled in particular at being treated unjustly by an institute that claims to research, teach, and advocate gender, race, sexuality, and social justice.
At this point, rather than the GRSJ or the Dean’s Office extending any belated invitation to the RAGA Students to full participation in a fair consultation process or proactive inclusive action regarding the future of RAGA Centre, on August 16th, the RAGA Student Networks received an email from both the Dean and the Dr. Bryson titled “Joint Deliberation and Invitation” which calls for a "project of repair". In this email, the Dean and Dr. Bryson state their intention to “allow” RAGA to remain “temporarily” in its current space. This Joint Deliberation and Invitation made no mention to the unfair and harmful manner in which members of the UBC and GRSJ Administration had handled this case, but instead seem to imply that RAGA was somehow equally culpable for the confusion. The framing of this “Invitation” is that the RAGA Centre was an active party in the forced relocation and simply refused to leave our space out of stubbornness.
Indeed, after calling for a “project of repair”, this letter of “Joint Deliberation” then goes on to do the very opposite. For example, the letter repeatedly reiterates as fact that the RAGA Centre space in Jack Bell Room 127 is and has always been “mixed-use space” coordinated by the GRSJ, rather than space the racialized students in the RAGA Student Networks’ have long used and autonomously coordinated. This consistent re-naming of the RAGA Centre as Jack Bell Room 127, not only ignores the very literal fact of The RAGA Centre’s existence (the door of the room is clearly marked by a name plaque “The RAGA Centre”, as the attached Appendix D photo illustrates), it depoliticizes, erases, and re-writes the history and meaning of that space for the racialized students whom it has housed since 2010. The RAGA Centre in effect becomes a mere physical space on campus with no political boundaries or meaning other than its location in the Jack Bell building and the GRSJ’s claim on it.
Where we stand now:
As an advocacy and support group for racialized students, we are concerned with the racial and colonial logics of the double-speak that comes through in the correspondence summarized above from the GRSJ leadership and the Dean of Arts. Most especially, given the points we make above, how are we to see the repeated assurances of support for RAGA by the GRSJ and the Dean of Arts as more than empty rhetoric? How is support or solidarity from the GRSJ and the Dean of Arts performed, given that the letter of Joint Deliberation so clearly, and from the outset, erases the fact of The RAGA Centre’s existence by referring to our centre as Jack Bell Room 127? We are left to assume that the “project of repair” proposed in the Joint Deliberation requires as a bottomline that the RAGA Student Networks accept this version of history and reality as undisputed fact. In so doing, this Joint Deliberation in effect speaks at us rather than with us. How is this “repair”? How does it even make “repair” possible?
We further think it important to not that such erasures and undermining of the RAGA Student Networks’ history and existence does not come out of a vacuum. RAGA students have reached out before for university support for our activities and work, and we have also, many times, expressed our concerns about institutional and informal resistances to our work and existence. Letters and extensive supporting documents were sent by us in 2013 and 2015 to the UBC President’s Office and several administrators, including to those who now align and ally in Joint Deliberations about us without us. Even prior to that, the RAGA Advisory Committee and RAGA Graduate Student Networks representatives met with the Dean of Arts regarding the necessity for university support and resources for the RAGA Centre. As just one example of our many efforts to garner UBC support and resources for RAGA’s critical race contributions to this campus, see the attached letter to President Toope dated September 2013 (see Appendix E attached). Our point here is, there can be no misunderstanding or doubt as to how the RAGA Students Networks’ understand our history, origins, objectives, purposes, or work, nor the meaning and functions of The RAGA Centre. Any such “misunderstanding” of that space’s use or autonomy thus can come only out of an intentional necessity to re-write the history of The RAGA Centre for a specific purpose.
Finally, we think it’s important to share with our supporting communities that the RAGA Student Networks have not stood alone during this most-recent struggle. We wish to acknowledge the many emails the RAGA Student Networks have received from faculty, staff, and students across many disciplines. Some of these Letters of Solidarity have been publically shared on various listervs; others have chosen to write privately. We thank you sincerely for your concern over the high-handed and disrespectful treatment we have received by UBC administrators.
We would like to re-share with you at least one of the letters we received in response to our Call for Solidarity this summer (see Appendix F attached). We chose this particular letter because its author, Dr. Sunera Thobani (the former director of RAGA) lays out some critical historical context of RAGA’s existence at UBC, which we consider key to understanding the broader implications of the RAGA Student Networks’ current struggle.
At this pivotal time of fighting for our continued existence, the members of the Undergraduate and Graduate RAGA Student Networks’ consider it more important than ever to continue to access, work, study and network in the RAGA Centre, as we have done since the founding of our networks five years ago. We have most recently reached out to, supported and provided volunteer opportunities for the new racialized Indigenous and of-colour students who joined UBC in the 2015 school year. We intend to carry on organizing events such as forums, film screenings and workshops over the course of this academic year and we invite and encourage racialized students to continue to use the space.
We also herein urge concerned University administrators, faculty, and the GRSJ to respect our right to self-determine and be central to decision-making, as students and in particular, as racialized students who have no other such site on campus for such self-determination and autonomy. We cannot begin to describe the impacts of this most recent onslaught on us, -- the stress, fatigue, and trauma that we continue to endure at the start of this school year, but notwithstanding that, the RAGA Student Networks are not going away. Rather, we are more determined than ever to find a way to ensure the RAGA Centre and members of the Student Networks never again have to experience what took place this summer.
We welcome your letters or emails of support or if you have any questions, comments, or concerns please feel free to contact us at ragacentre@gmail.com.
In Solidarity,
The Steering Committees of the RAGA Graduate and Undergraduate Student Networks
