Words by Doug Lickrelations
Reporting by Manuela Vega and Zachary Roman
Illustrations by Laila Amer
Words by Doug Lickrelations
Reporting by Manuela Vega and Zachary Roman
Illustrations by Laila Amer
While we may have been named after a colonial architect of residential schools 72 years ago, Ryerson has shown students countless times over the past ten years how much we’re willing to level the playing field for people who’ve been historically oppressed.
Take our soccer players for example. Everyone in Canada knows how much soccer players get made fun of here—they’re one of the most oppressed groups in the country, constantly being roasted by hockey players for faking injuries. When our soccer teams complained about poor practice facilities, we went and got them a brand-new, extremely level playing field.
Marginalized community members at Ryerson have demanded institutional change for years, and we always listen. We’ve responded with practical task forces, dummy thick reports and promises that we 100 per cent, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die intend on keeping.
Ryerson is one of the most progressive, forward-thinking and ~innovative~ universities in not only Canada, but the whole world. If a social justice issue is trending on the internet, you can bet that we’ll have something to say about it. On some occasions, if the issue trends for long enough, we’ll even go so far as to do something about it too.
If there’s one thing we hate at Ryerson, it’s moving backwards. The last thing we’d want is for a student to burn out or graduate before their demands for change are met. That’s why we now only accept tuition payments by credit card—so there’s no way students can ask us for change, like that one kid who accidentally added an extra zero onto his tuition cheque.
Join me and the rest of the Ryerson PR team as we guide you through our past ten years of awesomeness.
While we may have been named after a colonial architect of residential schools 72 years ago, Ryerson has shown students countless times over the past ten years how much we’re willing to level the playing field for people who’ve been historically oppressed.
Take our soccer players for example. Everyone in Canada knows how much soccer players get made fun of here—they’re one of the most oppressed groups in the country, constantly being roasted by hockey players for faking injuries. When our soccer teams complained about poor practice facilities, we went and got them a brand-new, extremely level playing field.
Marginalized community members at Ryerson have demanded institutional change for years, and we always listen. We’ve responded with practical task forces, dummy thick reports and promises that we 100 per cent, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die intend on keeping.
Ryerson is one of the most progressive, forward-thinking and ~innovative~ universities in not only Canada, but the whole world. If a social justice issue is trending on the internet, you can bet that we’ll have something to say about it. On some occasions, if the issue trends for long enough, we’ll even go so far as to do something about it too.
If there’s one thing we hate at Ryerson, it’s moving backwards. The last thing we’d want is for a student to burn out or graduate before their demands for change are met. That’s why we now only accept tuition payments by credit card—so there’s no way students can ask us for change, like that one kid who accidentally added an extra zero onto his tuition cheque.
Join me and the rest of the Ryerson PR team as we guide you through our past ten years of awesomeness.
To really prove our devoted and non-performative allyship we recently released a 10,000 page report that is TWICE as fire as our 2010 Anti-Racism Taskforce Report. By law, we are required to dispatch a fire truck with a full crew to deliver each report to its reader.
That report’s name? Barack Obama. Nah, I’m just fucking with you, but if I was American, I would’ve definitely tried to vote him in a third time. It’s actually called the Anti-Black Racism Campus Climate Review (ABRCCR). This report shows that as of July 2020, 10 of 59 recommendations from the Anti-Racism Taskforce Report have been completed. That’s a lightning-fast average of one completed recommendation per year. At this rate, every recommendation will be implemented by 4:20 pm on June 9, 2069. Nice.
We actually completed the ABRCCR in 2019, but like a flower, it could only reveal itself to you when the season was just right.
The delay was mostly because of the pandemic. However, we really wanted to release the ABRCCR on the date of Nelson Mandela International Day and the 10th anniversary of the Anti-Racism Taskforce Report, just to show how much we care about Black students. We would’ve done it on Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, but it conflicted with our plans for the annual staff roller skating night.
Members of the Black Liberation Collective at Ryerson, who called for the review to take place, would have you believe the delay was because the administration edited the report to its liking. But we only provided “copy editors” and “someone to design the layout,” which means we put Steve on the case.
He does everything around here, so we trusted him to design the layout of the narrative of the recommendations in the report to our liking. As a white man, we trusted that Steve would be the most objective person to edit the report.
In the 10,000-page ABRCCR, 14 of the dopest recommendations to ever be recommended were published. We know the 5,000-page Anti-Racism Taskforce Report had 59 recommendations, but this time around we really wanted to keep the report dense and the recommendations concise.
By keeping the recommendations concise, we made them easy to implement. Let’s take a look at an example: Some of our Black staff reported they’re feeling like they’re not given the opportunity to move up the ranks and like they’re passed up for jobs they’re qualified for, so we’ve committed to training our hiring managers so they don’t see colour.
At Ryerson, we’re also committed to campus safety. That’s why we tried to cut a deal with Toronto Police Services to have special constables on campus. We give them some of Eggy’s secret ‘coca-cola’ stash, they give us special constables. Seems simple, right?
The ABRCCR was supposed to inform our decision around campus security, and while we did note that it showed Black students felt they were treated by security with hostility and over-surveilled compared to their white peers, we have other, more pressing priorities, like making sure we have enough campus security on hand to banish people experiencing homelessness from our campus into the shadow realm. We wouldn’t want this campus’ stellar reputation ruined by people who are literally not causing any trouble in the slightest.
Just when we were about to finally implement our glorious special constables program, worldwide protests against anti-Black racism in policing erupted. Due to relentless pressure from student activists and social media, we had to cancel it at the last moment.
For now. We’ll show you proof that we have completely withdrawn our proposal from the Toronto police, and that there’s no possibility of a relationship in the future, when we feel like it.
To really prove our devoted and non-performative allyship we recently released a 10,000 page report that is TWICE as fire as our 2010 Anti-Racism Taskforce Report. By law, we are required to dispatch a fire truck with a full crew to deliver each report to its reader.
That report’s name? Barack Obama. Nah, I’m just fucking with you, but if I was American, I would’ve definitely tried to vote him in a third time. It’s actually called the Anti-Black Racism Campus Climate Review (ABRCCR). This report shows that as of July 2020, 10 of 59 recommendations from the Anti-Racism Taskforce Report have been completed. That’s a lightning-fast average of one completed recommendation per year. At this rate, every recommendation will be implemented by 4:20 pm on June 9, 2069. Nice.
We actually completed the ABRCCR in 2019, but like a flower, it could only reveal itself to you when the season was just right.
The delay was mostly because of the pandemic. However, we really wanted to release the ABRCCR on the date of Nelson Mandela International Day and the 10th anniversary of the Anti-Racism Taskforce Report, just to show how much we care about Black students. We would’ve done it on Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, but it conflicted with our plans for the annual staff roller skating night.
Members of the Black Liberation Collective at Ryerson, who called for the review to take place, would have you believe the delay was because the administration edited the report to its liking. But we only provided “copy editors” and “someone to design the layout,” which means we put Steve on the case.
He does everything around here, so we trusted him to design the layout of the narrative of the recommendations in the report to our liking. As a white man, we trusted that Steve would be the most objective person to edit the report.
In the 10,000-page ABRCCR, 14 of the dopest recommendations to ever be recommended were published. We know the 5,000-page Anti-Racism Taskforce Report had 59 recommendations, but this time around we really wanted to keep the report dense and the recommendations concise.
By keeping the recommendations concise, we made them easy to implement. Let’s take a look at an example: Some of our Black staff reported they’re feeling like they’re not given the opportunity to move up the ranks and like they’re passed up for jobs they’re qualified for, so we’ve committed to training our hiring managers so they don’t see colour.
At Ryerson, we’re also committed to campus safety. That’s why we tried to cut a deal with Toronto Police Services to have special constables on campus. We give them some of Eggy’s secret ‘coca-cola’ stash, they give us special constables. Seems simple, right?
The ABRCCR was supposed to inform our decision around campus security, and while we did note that it showed Black students felt they were treated by security with hostility and over-surveilled compared to their white peers, we have other, more pressing priorities, like making sure we have enough campus security on hand to banish people experiencing homelessness from our campus into the shadow realm. We wouldn’t want this campus’ stellar reputation ruined by people who are literally not causing any trouble in the slightest.
Just when we were about to finally implement our glorious special constables program, worldwide protests against anti-Black racism in policing erupted. Due to relentless pressure from student activists and social media, we had to cancel it at the last moment.
For now. We’ll show you proof that we have completely withdrawn our proposal from the Toronto police, and that there’s no possibility of a relationship in the future, when we feel like it.
In 2010, we started conducting research into Egerton Ryerson’s legacy and his relationship to our university. There were three main takeaways we found in our research about Egerton.
1. He seems like the kind of guy I could have a beer with.
2. He was smarter than any other human being to have ever lived.
3. He was actually kind of hot?
All in all, he seemed like the perfect guy to name a university after! No need to change our name.
Fast forward to 2015, when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released its report with 94 calls to action—dominating the news cycle at the time. We decided, without any outside influence, that year would be a good year to start the process of completing our own Truth and Reconciliation Community Consultation Report.
A very short three years later, in January 2018, it was released. I did a control+f search on the report’s PDF and I found that we used the word reconciliation a total of 300 times. If that is not a strong indicator that we’re working hard toward reconciliation with Indigenous communities at Ryerson, I don’t know what is.
The report’s release indicated that a working group would be formed, to then develop an action plan based on the report and that actual concrete action would begin in June 2019. So if you could just ignore the fact that it’s 2020 now, be patient and give us a hot minute on this, that would be great.
In 2017, the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) launched its Colonialism 150 campaign, which presented us with 11 demands for Indigenous justice. As your gracious overlords, we agreed to some of your ridiculous demands, as a treat. However, two of your major demands were just too egregious to even be worth considering: the possibility of renaming the university and removing the Egerton Ryerson statue.
I think folks would be a lot less worried about renaming the university if they just looked at our research that shows Egerton would’ve been a really cool guy to have a beer with. In terms of the statue, we already put up a plaque next to it—which is actually one of the highest forms of reconciliation anyone can do, right up there with pre-written land acknowledgements.
Yet somehow, multiple petitions have still surfaced asking for the statue’s removal, even though the former 2017 RSU vice-president equity and president were met with anger and ridicule when they initially put forward their request for it to be taken down. You mean to tell us that students are actually willing to fight through adversity?
The most recent petition was made this June and garnered over 8,000 signatures. All we’re gonna say is that the petition-industrial complex has been great for large institutions like us. If y’all don’t show up and cause a scene, or at the very least go hella viral, we can and will just ignore your petition.
We’ve also had issues with the statue being defaced. It’s been painted on multiple occasions, with some activists going as far as painting blood on Egerton’s hands. They must’ve snuck in and done it while our statue guarding cops were getting a donut at Tims.
Anyways, our janitor Steve is getting really tired of cleaning the statue all the time, so if you could give him a break and stop defacing it that would be awesome. He’s busy enough managing our Human Rights lawsuits.
Editor’s note: Our lawyer and copy editor Steve is also our janitor Steve.
In 2010, we started conducting research into Egerton Ryerson’s legacy and his relationship to our university. There were three main takeaways we found in our research about Egerton.
1. He seems like the kind of guy I could have a beer with.
2. He was smarter than any other human being to have ever lived.
3. He was actually kind of hot?
All in all, he seemed like the perfect guy to name a university after! No need to change our name.
Fast forward to 2015, when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released its report with 94 calls to action—dominating the news cycle at the time. We decided, without any outside influence, that year would be a good year to start the process of completing our own Truth and Reconciliation Community Consultation Report.
A very short three years later, in January 2018, it was released. I did a control+f search on the report’s PDF and I found that we used the word reconciliation a total of 300 times. If that is not a strong indicator that we’re working hard toward reconciliation with Indigenous communities at Ryerson, I don’t know what is.
The report’s release indicated that a working group would be formed, to then develop an action plan based on the report and that actual concrete action would begin in June 2019. So if you could just ignore the fact that it’s 2020 now, be patient and give us a hot minute on this, that would be great.
In 2017, the Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) launched its Colonialism 150 campaign, which presented us with 11 demands for Indigenous justice. As your gracious overlords, we agreed to some of your ridiculous demands, as a treat. However, two of your major demands were just too egregious to even be worth considering: the possibility of renaming the university and removing the Egerton Ryerson statue.
I think folks would be a lot less worried about renaming the university if they just looked at our research that shows Egerton would’ve been a really cool guy to have a beer with. In terms of the statue, we already put up a plaque next to it—which is actually one of the highest forms of reconciliation anyone can do, right up there with pre-written land acknowledgements.
Yet somehow, multiple petitions have still surfaced asking for the statue’s removal, even though the former 2017 RSU vice-president equity and president were met with anger and ridicule when they initially put forward their request for it to be taken down. You mean to tell us that students are actually willing to fight through adversity?
The most recent petition was made this June and garnered over 8,000 signatures. All we’re gonna say is that the petition-industrial complex has been great for large institutions like us. If y’all don’t show up and cause a scene, or at the very least go hella viral, we can and will just ignore your petition.
We’ve also had issues with the statue being defaced. It’s been painted on multiple occasions, with some activists going as far as painting blood on Egerton’s hands. They must’ve snuck in and done it while our statue guarding cops were getting a donut at Tims.
Anyways, our janitor Steve is getting really tired of cleaning the statue all the time, so if you could give him a break and stop defacing it that would be awesome. He’s busy enough managing our Human Rights lawsuits.
Editor’s note: Our lawyer and copy editor Steve is also our janitor Steve.
Here at Ryerson, we are Accessible As Fuck (AAF). Much of our architecture was clearly made to be accessible for people with a range of abilities, with ramps, full-bar door openers, braille on elevator buttons and more—you gotta give us credit for that major AAF-ness.
Accessibility is usually an afterthought for us though, so we’re asking for your help in making some things work too. Especially when it comes to the Sheldon & Tracy Levy Student Learning Centre (SLC), which was built in 2015.
It’s super cool hangout steps are inaccessible for people with mobility devices, so we kindly ask that you do us a solid and just hang out somewhere else.
The winding ramps leading to its front entrance can be difficult to navigate and can often be blocked by other students. However, this problem is easily fixed by bringing along a boombox and blasting Ludacris’ hit 2002 song “Move Bitch Get Out Da Way.”
What about the pillars and sudden grooves in the middle of the staircase that provide challenges for people with visual impairments, you may ask? Simply wear a helmet and body armour (now available at the online campus store, use code AAF25 for 25% off your first order!)
We also know that campus construction caused a ton of accessibility issues for folks. Well luckily for you, it’s finished just in time for you to not be here anyways.
Here at Ryerson, we are Accessible As Fuck (AAF). Much of our architecture was clearly made to be accessible for people with a range of abilities, with ramps, full-bar door openers, braille on elevator buttons and more—you gotta give us credit for that major AAF-ness.
Accessibility is usually an afterthought for us though, so we’re asking for your help in making some things work too. Especially when it comes to the Sheldon & Tracy Levy Student Learning Centre (SLC), which was built in 2015.
It’s super cool hangout steps are inaccessible for people with mobility devices, so we kindly ask that you do us a solid and just hang out somewhere else.
The winding ramps leading to its front entrance can be difficult to navigate and can often be blocked by other students. However, this problem is easily fixed by bringing along a boombox and blasting Ludacris’ hit 2002 song “Move Bitch Get Out Da Way.”
What about the pillars and sudden grooves in the middle of the staircase that provide challenges for people with visual impairments, you may ask? Simply wear a helmet and body armour (now available at the online campus store, use code AAF25 for 25% off your first order!)
We also know that campus construction caused a ton of accessibility issues for folks. Well luckily for you, it’s finished just in time for you to not be here anyways.
Surely our wonderful students must understand why Ryerson’s long-term economic health must always be a priority. We’re all just out here trying to obtain that grain am I right? I really don’t understand why anyone would’ve ever thought that tuition would be lowered during a pandemic.
Don’t y’all know that we have incurred $10 million in extra expenses since the pandemic started? And at least $5 of those extra expenses have been for something other than Ryerson president Mohamed Lachemi’s new air-tight, apocalypse-proof COVID-19 isolation penthouse suite. (The $5 was for Steve from accounts receivable’s Starbucks breakfast sandwich last Wednesday.)
Editor’s note: Our lawyer, copy editor and janitor Steve is also Steve from accounts receivable.
Speaking of Steve, I tried to get an answer from him about why international students have to pay us so much more to come here—not that we’re complaining about raking in that skrilla.
According to Steve, it’s because of some shit about taxes that I don’t really understand and that he didn’t feel like explaining to me—despite the fact that I took the risk of stealing $5 from Lachemi’s penthouse fund to get him a sandwich. Classic Steve, what a fuckin’ dick.
Anyways, it’s not like international students mind paying four times the price that domestic students do to come here. Ryerson is a world class institution of higher learning after all—and it’s located in the heart of Downtown Canada to boot. There’s even a Warehouse restaurant nearby!
Now is a better time than ever for you to remember that universities in Canada are and always have been for-profit businesses, not “public institutions.” Sure, we’ll help you out, but only if you can afford to pay the price. You scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours. You pickin’ up what we’re puttin’ down?
Surely our wonderful students must understand why Ryerson’s long-term economic health must always be a priority. We’re all just out here trying to obtain that grain am I right? I really don’t understand why anyone would’ve ever thought that tuition would be lowered during a pandemic.
Don’t y’all know that we have incurred $10 million in extra expenses since the pandemic started? And at least $5 of those extra expenses have been for something other than Ryerson president Mohamed Lachemi’s new air-tight, apocalypse-proof COVID-19 isolation penthouse suite. (The $5 was for Steve from accounts receivable’s Starbucks breakfast sandwich last Wednesday.)
Editor’s note: Our lawyer, copy editor and janitor Steve is also Steve from accounts receivable.
Speaking of Steve, I tried to get an answer from him about why international students have to pay us so much more to come here—not that we’re complaining about raking in that skrilla.
According to Steve, it’s because of some shit about taxes that I don’t really understand and that he didn’t feel like explaining to me—despite the fact that I took the risk of stealing $5 from Lachemi’s penthouse fund to get him a sandwich. Classic Steve, what a fuckin’ dick.
Anyways, it’s not like international students mind paying four times the price that domestic students do to come here. Ryerson is a world class institution of higher learning after all—and it’s located in the heart of Downtown Canada to boot. There’s even a Warehouse restaurant nearby!
Now is a better time than ever for you to remember that universities in Canada are and always have been for-profit businesses, not “public institutions.” Sure, we’ll help you out, but only if you can afford to pay the price. You scratch our back, we’ll scratch yours. You pickin’ up what we’re puttin’ down?
Back in 2016, two Ryerson students from a club called Divest Ryerson were arrested at Parliament Hill while protesting the Kinder Morgan TransCanada Pipeline expansion. The arrest drew more than 6,000 people to the Divest Ryerson Facebook page and their mission to get Ryerson to stop investing in fossil fuel companies gained traction.
What a couple of hippies eh? We were never really concerned that anything would come from that. And nothing did.
The students who founded Divest Ryerson graduated and we haven’t heard squat about divestment since! Our retirement portfolios are looking super strong thanks to all of our investments in oil companies.
Now, there’s a new group called Fossil Free Ryerson that’s looking to pick up where Divest Ryerson left off. But at the time of publication, they only have 84 likes on Facebook compared to the now-inactive Divest Ryerson’s 513.
Meanwhile, our Facebook page, “Fossil Fuel Fanclub,” has more than 10,000 likes and Ontario premier Doug Ford is a vocal supporter of it.
“If Ryerson invests a few million dollars more in fossil fuels, I might give the university its funding for the Brampton campus back,” said Ford. “Though, just like everything I say lately, that statement is subject to change at any moment.”
I hope the honourable Mr. Douglas Ford, who is a very handsome and strong leader, gives us that funding back. We’re straight funneling all of our investments into the fossil fuel industry now—we kinda blew a ton of cash on Lachemi’s penthouse so we really need this.
Congratulations! If you’re reading this, you’ve made it to the end of the article. Full disclosure: none of what you just read is real. It was satire. Satire is a noun that describes the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people or institutions. Any resemblance to any real life people, events or experiences is purely coincidental. Please don’t sue us.
Back in 2016, two Ryerson students from a club called Divest Ryerson were arrested at Parliament Hill while protesting the Kinder Morgan TransCanada Pipeline expansion. The arrest drew more than 6,000 people to the Divest Ryerson Facebook page and their mission to get Ryerson to stop investing in fossil fuel companies gained traction.
What a couple of hippies eh? We were never really concerned that anything would come from that. And nothing did.
The students who founded Divest Ryerson graduated and we haven’t heard squat about divestment since! Our retirement portfolios are looking super strong thanks to all of our investments in oil companies.
Now, there’s a new group called Fossil Free Ryerson that’s looking to pick up where Divest Ryerson left off. But at the time of publication, they only have 84 likes on Facebook compared to the now-inactive Divest Ryerson’s 513.
Meanwhile, our Facebook page, “Fossil Fuel Fanclub,” has more than 10,000 likes and Ontario premier Doug Ford is a vocal supporter of it.
“If Ryerson invests a few million dollars more in fossil fuels, I might give the university its funding for the Brampton campus back,” said Ford. “Though, just like everything I say lately, that statement is subject to change at any moment.”
I hope the honourable Mr. Douglas Ford, who is a very handsome and strong leader, gives us that funding back. We’re straight funneling all of our investments into the fossil fuel industry now—we kinda blew a ton of cash on Lachemi’s penthouse so we really need this.
Congratulations! If you’re reading this, you’ve made it to the end of the article. Full disclosure: none of what you just read is real. It was satire. Satire is a noun that describes the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people or institutions. Any resemblance to any real life people, events or experiences is purely coincidental. Please don’t sue us.
