Compensation, public apology for ‘Mei-Ling’
A Concordia University student association has agreed to apologize publicly and to financially compensate one of its former vice-presidents for the sexist and racist harassment and discrimination she claims she endured during her mandate.
The young woman, who has asked to be identified by the pseudonym “Mei-Ling,” filed a discrimination and harassment complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission in February against the Arts and Science Federation of Associations (ASFA) and two of its former executive members. ASFA is Concordia’s largest faculty association, representing nearly 15,000 undergraduate Arts and Science students.
After a formal mediation process conducted by the commission, ASFA’s current president, Jenna Cocullo, signed an agreement Thursday committing ASFA to pay Mei-Ling an undisclosed sum, issue a public apology to her for the harassment and discrimination she suffered at the hands of ASFA and its former representatives, and set up an independent task force to address issues raised by the case.
Mei-Ling told the Montreal Gazette she is pleased with the outof-court settlement with ASFA, but she will continue to pursue her human rights complaint against the other two respondents. She is not interested in mediation with the two former ASFA executives, and mediation is only an option if both parties agree to it. Her complaint against them is being investigated by the Human Rights Commission.
“It’s nice to see things progress, when previously I was denied progress,” she said in an interview Thursday after she signed the agreement with ASFA.
Mei-Ling’s human rights complaint describes a hostile environment in the ASFA offices, where she was excluded from meetings, criticized unfairly and denied the honorarium granted other executives. In her evidence, Mei-Ling submitted screen grabs of dozens of denigrating Facebook and email exchanges about her between the two executive members, which she discovered because one of them left his email and Facebook accounts open on a shared computer in the ASFA offices.
In those conversations, which took place between February 2013 and March 2014, the two executives ridiculed Mei-Ling ’s Chinese heritage, joked about having her impeached if she did not have sex with them and referred to her using discriminatory and sexist terms such as “chink slave”, “bitch” and “whore.”
“The conversation I found on Facebook was really just a window into their personal values,” MeiLing said Thursday.
“I believe that they were inherently sexist and racist and ... they probably made decisions based on those values every single day.”
After attempting to get help from Concordia’s administration and being disappointed, Mei-Ling sought legal advice from the campus legal information clinic. The clinic put her in contact with the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR), a civil rights advocacy group, which submitted the complaint on her behalf to the Human Rights Commission. CRARR is expected to hold a news conference on Monday to announce the settlement.
“I felt that it was wrong,” MeiLing said when asked why she decided to take her complaint to the commission. “No one around me seemed to think it was wrong, but I knew that this couldn’t possibly be tolerated. I thought, if I had it this bad, imagine what the next person would experience, and the person after that. I didn’t run for ASFA because I wanted to put a line on my CV. I ran for ASFA because I care about the community of students. The fact that I was victimized, as a student leader, what kind of experience could other people be having?”
CRARR executive director Fo Niemi said the settlement is important because the student association, by agreeing to set up a task force, is recognizing it has an important role in promoting equality on campus and beyond. He says he is alarmed by what he sees as a growing backlash against women in leadership roles, women in nontraditional fields and female members of cultural, religious or visible minorities.
“The universities are starting to recognize that you have to start young, you’ve got to start early and send a strong message at an institutional level, because these are the future leaders, future workers and future decision makers ... Oppression has to be nipped in the bud.”
Niemi and Mei-Ling said they hope the task force will be student-led, but will include experts on discrimination from within and outside the Concordia community. Its mandate will be to recommend to ASFA council concrete ways to prevent violence and discrimination against women and minorities within student associations and other university bodies, and ways to ensure complaints about such violence and discrimination are processed thoroughly and efficiently.
Niemi said he hopes the task force ASFA creates will have diverse composition, including representatives of aboriginal and foreign students, and disabled students, for example.
Current ASFA President Jenna Cocullo, who was not a member of the ASFA executive during MeiLing’s mandate, did not respond to the Gazette’s requests for an interview.
But Cocullo and the current ASFA council have signalled their willingness to change the way ASFA responds to complaints of discrimination. In August, the following notice about Mei-Ling’s case was posted on ASFA’s website:
“ASFA will be working to fully cooperate in mediation in regards to the Mei-Ling case. Due to our lack of response towards complaints received, ASFA takes responsibility for the environment that its members and Mei-Ling experienced during the years in question, including a racially and sexually aggressive atmosphere.
“ASFA has begun working to distance itself from the perpetrators involved and to hold them accountable. We promise to continue reforming our spaces, processes, and attitudes to repair damage created by systemic racism and sexism within the Federation and apologize to all members affected by these incidences and any other violence permitted to exist within ASFA due to our past inaction.
“Finally, ASFA strongly encourages the other respondents in the Mei-Ling case to follow suit in taking full accountability for their actions and issue a sincere apology to the community they have damaged.”