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The student union at Toronto’s Ryerson University is divided over a demand to rename the university due to the views of its namesake, Egerton Ryerson, on the education of indigenous children, The Globe and Mail reported.
As the university says in a brief biography on its website, Ryerson, who died in 1882, helped establish free and compulsory education in Ontario but believed in separate systems of education for Native and non-Native children, a view that influenced the development of the residential school system for Canada’s indigenous children. A 2015 report by Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, described here by The New York Times, documented widespread abuses at the residential schools and described the practice of forcibly removing First Nations children from their families as amounting to "cultural genocide." (The university says on its website that Ryerson was not involved in administering the schools, but that "his ideas were used by others to create their blueprint.")
The Globe and Mail reported that a July 1 post on the student union’s Facebook page included 11 demands, including renaming the university and taking down a statue of Ryerson (at right), and was signed by the "Indigenous Students Association, Continuing Education Students' Association of Ryerson [and the] Ryerson Students' Union.” But some leaders of the student union said in a subsequent Facebook post that the campaign was not approved through the student union’s governance channels.
"Although the campaign holds immense value and significance to truth and reconciliation, as board members we were not consulted and have continued to remain in the dark about what exactly is happening with this campaign," a post signed by three of the five members of the student union’s executive committee and 20 of its 37 directors said. "This campaign has not been approved at committee or board level, and was launched before having approval of the executive … we were not and continue to not be a part of the decision-making process."
