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Media, Creative Arts, and Design Anti-Racism Action Plan

Over the last few months, like you, I’ve witnessed countless instances of racist violence on television and on social media. I’ve heard the stories of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Rayshard Brooks in the United States, and the stories of Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Chantel Moore, Rodney Levi, and Ejaz Choudry closer to home.

But I’ve also heard many of your stories.

I recognize that the violence and harm of systemic and individual racism appears just as often in classrooms as it does on our screens. It occurs in micro and macro forms, and we have significant work to do at the Faculty and program level if we are to ensure Black, Indigenous and racialized students, faculty and staff feel fully respected, supported and a sense of belonging.

The culture of white supremacy leaves all of us with many challenges. Although I’m Latino, I have white skin privilege, and I need to check my privilege and my biases every day. Like you, I must continue to challenge attitudes, behaviours and structures if I am to lead this Faculty as it does its part to root out and prevent anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, and other forms of harassment and discrimination on our campuses.

Our programs may have been silent on social media, but being accountable to our communities and to ourselves means that we must be more transparent and collaborative about the changes and work we need to do.

To start, the Faculty of Media, Creative Arts, and Design commits to the following:

  1. Developing and implementing a Faculty-specific strategic plan to address systemic racism and implicit bias in Media, Creative Arts, and Design classrooms and processes in consultation with our communities. This plan will support the work of the College’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce, and will also address issues specific to the industries for which we’re preparing our students. A draft of the plan will be issued as of Winter 2021, and our communities will have the opportunity to provide additional feedback before the plan is finalized.
  2. Developing action items for individual programs to support the implementation of the strategic plan. Program-specific action items will be prepared by Winter 2021 and will also be included as addenda to the strategic plan.
  3. Hiring the appropriate staff to help us to embed anti-racist content into the curriculum of all our programs.
  4. The EDI Taskforce, Access & Equity: Employees working group has developed a robust set of objectives and related workplan to remove barriers to recruiting, retaining and advancing more faculty and staff from Indigenous, Black and other racialized communities. We commit to implementing this workplan fully.
  5. Working with the Advancement Office to develop and allocate more scholarships for Black and Indigenous students.
  6. Facilitating Faculty-wide anti-bias training for all staff and students.
  7. Facilitating program-specific outreach programming to areas of the GTA with large BIPOC populations.

As we work to develop our Faculty strategic plan, please continue to share your lived experiences and concerns by emailing me directly at guillermo.acosta@humber.ca.

I take your feedback seriously, and I will act on it. I am committed to ensuring that the Faculty of Media, Creative Arts, and Design is an inclusive, safe and enriching learning community for everyone.

In solidarity,

Guillermo Acosta
Senior Dean, Faculty of Media, Creative Arts, and Design

Guillermo Acosta

Guillermo Acosta
Senior Dean, Faculty of Media, Creative Arts, and Design