EQUITY COMMISSIONER Diana

Vink

Thus far, the Equity Commission has had an incredibly productive start to the semester. We have notably seen a significant increase in our collaborations with other organizations and entities, leading us to provide a great variety of valuable services to the Vic community.

To begin, VUSAC ended last semester by providing support to the Academic Commission’s exam jam giveaway, helping to purchase, order, and package study and well-being materials given away via Instagram. We gave packages to around 80 winners, and we’re grateful to have been able to support and expand this endeavor by the Academic Commission.

Along with VUSAC’s VPSO, I worked to develop coherent equity training for student organizations. 75% of levy executives and 50% of club executives are mandated to attend equity training, and thus Michael and I conducted four separate training sessions across February 3 and 4. Our in-person attendance was 114 students, and Michael and I are currently editing a virtual version to send out to executives who may not have been able to attend. The feedback we have received both verbally and via our feedback form has been overwhelmingly positive, giving us a strong outline to use moving forward.

With the Sustainability Commission, we ran Environmental Equity Week from February 6 to 10. We had a panel on discussing environmental equity, a story walk with Professor Jon Johnson discussing the Indigenous history of UofT land, a collaboration with RealTalk discussing divestment at Vic, and, ending the week, an exciting DivestFest including trivia and information distribution on what divestment is and how it works. We are incredibly grateful to those who supported us during this week, including our speakers, RealTalk, Stop Ecocide, the Cat’s Eye, and both of our executive teams. Overall, most events saw a turnout of 15-20 people, with DivestFest appearing to hit close to 100 attendees over the course of the four hour event. We are incredibly proud of the work that was done, and hope to see equally well-attended events moving forward!