Spring at UTM: Reflection and Action

Today is the last day of May, which means we’re heading into an especially joyous time of the UTM year. The sun is shining, and the campus is blooming; there are fawns and owlets in the forest and tadpoles in all the campus ponds. We’re about to celebrate our brilliant graduating students at Convocation, and we're beginning Pride Month and National Indigenous History Month. We deserve to feel good about what our community has accomplished in the past two years.

But we also deserve space to grieve. The past years—even the past weeks—have seen a lot of injustice and suffering: the invasion of Ukraine; the racist murder of ten people at a supermarket in a Black community in Buffalo, New York; the cowardly shooting of nineteen children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. May marked two years since the murder of George Floyd and one year since the discovery of 215 unmarked graves of children on Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc territory at the former Kamloops Residential School. And of course people are still coping with the many burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I know that our UTM community feels the impact of it all. So, I wanted to pause and acknowledge how much many people are carrying—and how much we need to keep each other’s feelings and experiences in our thoughts. I also wanted to acknowledge that our thoughts are not enough. In response to injustice, we need courageous, collaborative action that lives up to our values and promises. We can start by doing well at home.

At UTM that means we can practice anti-racism and anti-colonialism, guided by the calls to action of Wecheehetowin and the commitments of our Anti-Oppression Task Forces. We can welcome displaced students and scholars to campus and raise funds in their support. We can teach, learn and live a truth that confronts the past and present histories of racism and gun violence. And we can recognize our colleagues’ and students’ struggles and share resources for their care, including My SSP and EFAP.

It’s such a privilege and pleasure for me to live and work on our beautiful campus. It’s an even greater privilege to work alongside so many people committed to serving and supporting UTM’s diverse communities.

Alexandra Gillespie
Vice-President and Principal
University of Toronto Mississauga