On August 30, SFU and Fernwood Publishing hosted a panel discussion and book launch of Academic Well-being of Racialized Students. The event was held in collaboration with Vancouver Status of Women and the Racialized Students Academic Network.
Edited by Dr. Benita Bunjun, the book is a “collection [with] academic chapters, spoken word, and art by 15 contributors.” The book discusses how racialized students, who have historically been excluded from academic spaces, navigate colonial structures of education. The panel featured three contributors, Vanessa Mitchell, Zain/Mason Meghji, and Nathalie Lozano-Neira.
The event opened with Dorothy Christian, SFU associate director Indigenous initiatives, giving a land acknowledgement and explained her contribution in the book includes a chapter on her academic writing process. She said, “We are in a process of change and transformation. And this is what I see this book as. This is a tool that gives faculty and department chairs and fellow graduate students on how it was all navigated, the system, in order for us to get through it.”
Bunjun defined the book as a compilation of works “from those that dare to create hybridized transformative spaces of good relations, knowledge creation, and community-building.”
Bunjun said academic well-being refers to the capacity institutions will implement policies and services “that promote the mental, physical and intellectual wellness of students.”
Bunjun described the issues racialized students face due to existing systems. She quoted, “Due to the lack of diversity of racialized critical scholars, we find ourselves gravitating towards the few that exist. We are troubled by having to demand more from already marginalized faculty who themselves experience racism within their departments and classrooms.”
In another chapter of the book, Mitchell highlights that claiming injustice to be a thing of the past is a “continued narrative rooted in colonization.” She mentioned the chapter touches upon various key themes in collective Indigenous history; including repercussions of the Indian Act, terminology in academia, navigating community relations, and students’ trauma and harm.
Contributor and panelist Meghji quoted a poetry excerpt from the book: “The beautiful thing about being surrounded by brown people is that when they ask me where I’m from, I feel more at home than I have ever felt.”
Neira spoke on how academia holds the expectation of separating identity from work, because it is otherwise viewed as “biased.”
She closed the contribution to the panel, by quoting her work in the book, “rather than adapting our ways of being, thinking and working to fit white academia, we must continue questioning, critiquing and creating discomfort in the systems and people — who for years studied us and claimed expert of our experiences.”
