Students, ex-president raise concerns about racism at NSCAD

Alexandria Masse remembers the day she went home crying in the spring of 2020 after a staff member at NSCAD University looked at her and said, "it makes sense the virus came from China because the Chinese are so dirty."

"I genuinely feel it's an unsafe place if you're a minority there," said Masse, who is half Chinese and graduated from the textile and fashion program in 2022.

She is one of seven current and former students who spoke to CBC News about their experiences with racism at the school. They say racialized students at NSCAD are often patronized and disrespected by faculty, and the university does little to protect them.

"I've witnessed professors that I absolutely love just tear apart, yell, and curse at Asian international students for literally no other reason than they can't speak English with, like, a perfect Canadian accent," said Masse, who grew up in Windsor, Ont.

Student union president Olivia Fay said she has heard several reports of racism from current students, but none have filed a formal complaint due to fear of retaliation. She said one incident involved a professor asking international students from China to pick an English name for themselves, which left them feeling uneasy.

At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, a group of BIPOC students who felt NSCAD was doing too little to address institutionalized racism put together an exhibition on campus to call out the lack of action. 

The exhibit involved a student named Excel Garay dressing up as a clown and sitting in the window of a mock NSCAD diversity, inclusion, and equity office.

"We all manifested our frustrations through that work," said Garay, who graduated in 2022. "That structural problem is still not being addressed despite the call of diversity and inclusion and equity."

Last year, prominent art historian, professor and author Charmaine Nelson resigned from her position as the university's director of the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery at NSCAD because she felt discriminated against as a Black woman.

The university has not disclosed whether it launched an investigation into her allegation. But NSCAD President Peggy Shannon said that the university takes racism and structural concerns very seriously and that Nelson had "expressed her disappointment that NSCAD was unable to provide a spousal appointment for her non-academic partner." 

Nelson told CBC News that was not the determining factor in her decision to leave.

Previous president speaks out

Aoife Mac Namara, who was appointed as NSCAD president in 2019 before being removed a year later, said there was a lot of resistance at the university to understanding systemic racism during her time there. 

She said the issue starts with the board of governors, which doesn't push for fundamental changes after hearing concerns.

Mac Namara said she began working with students and other stakeholders in June 2020 to create a task force geared toward developing an anti-racist action plan for the university, after hearing several complaints on the issue. It was called President's Advisory Council on Anti-Racist Initiatives (PADCARI).

"It was diluted completely," said Mac Namara, because it didn't have any capacity to make changes.

When a group of Chinese students told her they were being graded unfairly, she recommended that they put a complaint in writing. She said she took that to the relevant dean, but an investigation by the administration found no evidence to uphold the complaint. 

"Basically, people want to defend the faculty," said Mac Namara. "It's more important that nobody is labelled racist than it is to solve the problem."

Mac Namara said she delivered a presentation on systemic racism to the board the day before she was removed from her position on June 26, 2020. A memo sent to the NSCAD community by the board of governors provided no explanation for her removal. 

But it prompted Nelson to write a letter to the chair of the board, saying that the decision to remove Mac Namara sent a message that it was motivated by her efforts to "create an anti-racist university."

Shannon said in an interview that she has never heard any complaints of racism from students and cannot speak to incidents that took place before she became president in 2022. She said she is working on making the school more inclusive. 

But those accusing the university of racism feel the actions taken so far to eliminate the problem amount to lip service.

"When students like myself and other people would try to have these issues addressed, we would either be told like, 'Oh, you're exaggerating. That didn't actually happen.' Or it would be swept under the rug. Or it wouldn't be taken seriously," said Masse.

She said she knows of more than one student who dropped out because of the racism they experienced at the school.

Kris Reppas, the Nova Scotia chairperson at the Canadian Federation of Students, worked with Mac Namara to create PADCARI. He said what stands out about NSCAD compared to other universities is the lack of BIPOC staff and students, and the lack of action in the wake of informal complaints.

Reppas, who is Indigenous and graduated from NSCAD in 2021, said he experienced racism at the school even though he looks white. 

"I experienced tokenism, I experienced intimidation, and I also experienced threats of board removal for student seats," he said, adding that there was a lot of denial on the issue from the school's administration. 

He said international students received the worst treatment.

"You see their work devalued because they can't communicate as well in English as their domestic counterparts." 

What is NSCAD doing now?

Shannon said she has implemented new initiatives to make the university more inclusive since starting her five-year term last July. The school has expanded supports for BIPOC students, she said, and an office of opportunity and belonging has been established along with an online system for anonymously reporting discrimination.

She also said 80 per cent of the board has changed over the last three years and they are working to be more inclusive.

After CBC News shared the accounts of BIPOC students' experiencing racism, Shannon said she felt sad. 

"It makes me feel like we need to do a better job every day. I come in every single day and I think, well, what can we do today to move the needle forward?" 

The university will hire another cohort of BIPOC faculty this year, she said. That will bring the total number of BIPOC faculty to 12 out of 41. 

Shannon said the university is also trying to incorporate more about equity, diversity and inclusion into a strategic plan for the institution.

"We're really focused on individual accountability," she said.