You can now help Ryerson University pick its new name
Ryerson University took another step towards erasing the troubling connection to its namesake on Tuesday, launching a three-week community input period to help choose a new name.
Starting today until December 7, 2021, members of the community can weigh in on the renaming process through an online survey, email, and via social media using hashtag #NextChapterName, or through letter writing.
“The feedback and insights shared throughout the engagement period will guide the University Renaming Advisory Committee (URAC) through the process of developing a shortlist of potential names for the university,” the school said in a release. “The shortlist, along with rationale for the selections, will be submitted to the university president and Board of Governors for a final decision by the end of the 2021/2022 academic year.”
Advertisement
The online survey invites participants to share “perspectives and ideas about a new name for the university” and includes questions like: “Do you want the university’s new name to honour a notable person?” and “Do you want the university’s new name to reflect an aspect of its mission or values?” Participants can also submit their suggestions for a new name.
Last August, Ryerson’s Board of Governors approved a motion to accept all 22 recommendations from a special task force to rename the school.
Soliciting community input was one of those recommendations.
Egerton Ryerson is considered an architect of Canada’s residential school system which aimed to convert and assimilate Indigenous children into white Canadian culture.
A report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in 2015 identified 3,200 deaths among residential students while acknowledging that “the work of identifying the number of students who died in residential schools has only commenced.”
Advertisement
Anger over Ryerson’s continued association with the University reached a boiling point last July, when a statue of Egerton Ryerson on school campus was defaced and eventually toppled.
Demonstrators splattered the statue with paint, then cut off its head before carrying it to Lake Ontario and lowering it by rope into the water.
The statue had become a rallying point in Toronto following the discoveries of unmarked graves at the sites of several former residential schools.
With files from Lucas Casaletto
