Ryersonian The
Produced by the Ryerson School of Journalism Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Volume 70, Number 15
@theryersonian / www.ryersonian.ca
Prof aids pregnant refugees
Otis on Ice
By Kara Anderson Ryersonian Staff
Angelyn Francis / Ryersonian Staff
Otis, the hockey-loving bulldog, runs alongside Dan Petz, 20, who was playing hockey with a friend in Devonian Square in Toronto on Feb. 12, 2016. It’s not the first time Otis has been spotted playing on the frozen pond, which is affectionately nicknamed Lake Devo, chasing the puck away from students.
Collective tackles transphobia
Workshops and zine aim to educate students, faculty By Krista Hessey Ryersonian Staff
Starting in March, the Ryerson Trans Collective plans to launch a campaign to tackle systemic cissexism and transphobia on campus. “Recently what I have been finding very challenging is dealing with transphobia in the classroom and transphobic professors,” said Markus Harwood-Jones, who also goes by Star. “It’s everything from professors who teach without us in mind at all … to very overt, blatant examples of transphobia.” Harwood-Jones, who uses the pronouns he and they, is an organizer of the Trans Collective at Ryerson, which also headed the successful campaign to implement gender-neutral washrooms on campus last fall. On Monday, university administration approved a poster campaign which will inform students of the existing single-stall washrooms and encourage inclusion for trans (the shortened adjective is used by activists and researchers) students accessing the washrooms. Members of the collective began discussing issues to do with the treatment of trans students in classrooms in the fall of 2015.
“I know many students have felt like the classroom just isn’t made for them and courses just aren’t made for them,” said HarwoodJones. “They’ve felt so alienated to the point when some have considered dropping out.” The Trans Collective will be holding three “How to Deal” workshops in March and April. The workshops will discuss how to respond to faculty who create an unwelcoming learning environment, how to lodge a complaint and will also give students the opportunity to highlight experiences of harassment or ignorance from peers or authority figures at Ryerson. The collective has invited representatives from the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU), the Continuing Education Students’ Association of Ryerson (CESAR), Office of the Ombudsperson and the university’s equity services department to attend. Under Ryerson’s discrimination and harassment policy, in accordance with the Ontario Human Rights Code, discrimination and harassment on the basis of gender identity and gender expression is against the law. “Some members of the community feel as though their point of view trumps any of the poli-
cies,” said Rabia Idrees, RSU vice-president of equity. “There may also be a lack of knowledge towards these policies and the consequences associated with violating them.” While the workshops are aimed to be peer-to-peer support, anyone from the Ryerson community is welcome. In tandem with the workshops, the Trans Collective is also creating a zine — a small self-published collection of work — as a way to share the experiences of trans students with the rest of the student body. “A lot of people just don’t get non-binarism,” said Chrys Saget-Richard, a member of
the Queer and Trans People of Colour Collective (QTPOC) and Racialised Students’ Collective. Saget-Richard, who uses the pronoun they, said they feel silenced and uncomfortable when a professor or student misgenders them. “Until people self-educate on a mass scale, I don’t know how much we’re going to get done,” they said. A 2011 Egale Canada study found that 90 per cent of trans high school students hear transphobic comments daily and 78 per cent reported they felt unsafe at school. Please see CAMPAIGN, page 4
Olivia McLeod / Ryersonian Staff
Markus Harwood-Jones in the Trans Collective’s office in the SCC.
A Ryerson midwifery professor is helping newly arrived refugees find proper care, and is appealing for Ryerson students to assist her. In January, Manavi Handa arrived at a hotel in Toronto’s west end where she was told there was only one pregnant woman. After learning how to say “midwife” and “pregnant” in Arabic — qabilat and hamil — she walked through the hotel repeating these words to groups of women. Handa discovered that many women were pregnant but afraid to come forward. She is using her industry connections to find proper care for her 18 clients at the hotel, but she said she will be unable to see them through the entirety of their pregnancies (as most she assumes will be moving to Mississauga). According to Handa, there is plenty of room for Ryerson students to help. “This is really important,” Handa said. She said students who speak Arabic would be helpful. There’s also a need for transportation to get women to and from doctor appointments. Handa suggested early childhood education students could help watch children while the mothers go for their appointments. Both privately and government-sponsored refugees have medical insurance packages once they arrive in Canada, but they need help navigating the healthcare system as, back home, many were used to birthing procedures Handa calls unsafe. She was shocked to find many women have had caesarean sections. Some, she said, have had as many as five. According to Irin, a news agency that covers humanitarian crises, one hospital in Homs, Syria, delivers 75 per cent of babies through C-sections compared to 30 per cent in Ontario – and that’s considered high. Handa said a Syrian woman told her doctors get paid more per C-section. Handa added there’s a tremendous amount of resilience in the refugees. “I know refugee trauma usually takes years to surface, but these people are very strong.”