2 Who and What is CIPA?
CIPA is a collaborative research project, directed and guided by an interdisciplinary team, including experienced principal investigators and emerging undergraduate and graduate student researchers with a diversity of lived experiences and expertise at the intersections of race, class, gender, and disability in higher education settings. You can find more information on the CIPA team here.
The CIPA project was started in April 2022 by several team members and emerged out of previous research projects focused on documenting barriers to learning experienced by disabled students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) settings (Bulk et al. 2023), as well as developing toolkits to support STEM instructors in implementing accessible pedagogy (Epstein et al. 2021). In those previous projects, CIPA team members engaged with York University’s Student Accessibility Services (SAS) office, including consultation with access advisors and other SAS administrators. In these consultations, CIPA team members noticed a shared recognition that current accommodation processes do not adequately serve many of York’s students and community members and that alternatives should be considered. Yet, these ideas are not reflected in institutional action and policy change at York University. One explanation for the lack of action articulated during previous consultations is that SAS is unfamiliar with possible alternatives. The CIPA project, then, started with an opening from SAS—an openness to consider alternatives to the status quo. This also gave us a direction: we needed to search for existing alternatives. This report aims to present to SAS and other individuals in positions of power at York the results of our search.
The overarching objective of the CIPA project is to develop an alternative to the dominant academic accommodation process in place at York University that is more equitable, more accessible, and more beneficial for students. We plan to do this with disabled and other disenfranchised students and community members as well as SAS at York University. In the next phase of our project, we will use the information reported on here and elsewhere (Fernandes & Cort, forthcoming; Johnson et al., forthcoming) to inform a community-based collaborative design project to pilot an alternative pathway for access at York that better responds to the needs of its students and community members underserved by the existing accommodation system.
Context of Access and Location
CIPA understands that any promising practices for access at York University must contend with the institution’s location on stolen Indigenous lands in North York. Dele Adeyemo (2023) maps the history of this land theft, as Indigenous peoples such as the Huron-Wendat were violently expelled from their longhouses and the land by white settlers who seized the area as agricultural property[1]. The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) has been stewarded, defended, and cared for by the Huron-Wendat, Seneca, Mississauga, Longhouse nations, Haudenosaunee nations, and Anishinaabek nations. The land theft of Toronto in the form of the so-called Toronto purchase of 1787 from the Mississaugas of the Credit marks the establishment of Canada as a settler colony (Talking Treaties Collective). Thus, the ongoing project of access will always be especially incomplete without Land Back[2].
CIPA also understands that it is critical to confront York University’s ongoing settler colonial violence against the high “Priority Neighborhood”[3] of Jane and Finch, in which a large percentage of Toronto’s poor, Black, and visibly racialized communities live. For example, when York University built a subway station on campus in 2017 to support “access” as part of its gentrification of the neighborhood as “University Heights”, it made the area more inaccessible to the Jane and Finch community. Food and rent prices in the area increased, leading to the displacement of Black families (Williams, 2018). In their study of the institution as a colonizing institute, Eizadirad (2017) explains:
By the racialization of Jane and Finch and Othering of its immigrants and visible minorities, York University exemplifies the processes by which whiteness is protected and privileged and the university’s perpetuation of poverty and violence in Jane and Finch are masked. (p.25)
The ongoing project of access will always be especially incomplete without reparations to Black people and communities who are enduring the histories of the transatlantic slave trade and plantation capitalism.
- Check out Dele Adeyemo’s artwork From Longhouse to Highrise: The Course of Empire, 2023: https://longhousetohighrise.github.io/ ↵
- The Land Back editorial collective of Briarpatch Magazine articulate Land Back as, “the demand to rightfully return colonized land – like that in so-called Canada – to Indigenous Peoples. But when we say “Land Back” we aren’t asking for just the ground, or for a piece of paper that allows us to tear up and pollute the earth. We want the system that is land to be alive so that it can perpetuate itself, and perpetuate us as an extension of itself. That’s what we want back: our place in keeping land alive and spiritually connected (Longman et al., 2020, para 2). ↵
- “Starting in 2005, the City of Toronto identified thirteen “Priority Neighbourhoods” to receive extra attention for the purpose of neighbourhood improvement in various capacities. In March 2014, the City of Toronto expanded the program to include 31 identified neighbourhoods and re-named the program from “Priority Neighbourhoods” to “Neighbourhood Improvement Areas” (City of Toronto, 2016). According to the City of Toronto (2016) website, the 31 neighbourhoods were selected through the Toronto Strong Neighbourhoods Strategy 2020 which identified areas falling below the Neighbourhood Equity Score, hence requiring special attention. Since inception of these neighbourhood improvement initiatives, Jane and Finch has always been one of the neighbourhoods identified as requiring special attention whether as a “Priority Neighbourhood” or a “Neighbourhood Improvement Area” (City of Toronto, 2016).” ↵
“Settler colonialism is an ongoing system of power that perpetuates the genocide and repression of indigenous peoples and cultures. Essentially hegemonic in scope, settler colonialism normalizes the continuous settler occupation, exploiting lands and resources to which indigenous peoples have genealogical relationships. Settler colonialism includes interlocking forms of oppression, including racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism” (Cox, 2017, Oxford Bibilographies: https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0029.xml)
“The term “racialized” is a sociological concept closely related to racism. People seen as belonging to racialized minorities are people who could be perceived as being socially different from, for example, the racial or ethnic majority. In Canada, the term “racialized minority” usually refers to non-white people. The word “racialized” stresses the fact that race is neither biological nor objective but is a concept which is societal in origin. Categorizations other than “racialized” include “people of colour” or BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour).” (The Canadian Encyclopedia, online: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/racialized-minorities)
Plantation Capitalism “We define plantation capitalism as a social and economic management system in Southern cities where the descendants of planter families maintain political and economic dynasties largely by keeping Black workers in extreme poverty, landless, and without political power through extractive policies and police terrorism” (Root Cause Research Center, 2020, online: https://www.rootcauseresearch.org/post/plantation-capitalism-in-louisville-kentucky)