Open Letter to Dalhousie School of Architecture on Racial Slur Incident


To Dalhousie University School of Architecture’s Administration and Faculty,

Where is your response to the racial slur used by a faculty member of the School of Architecture last year?


We, the students of Brian Lilley’s Summer 2019 Master of Architecture Copenhagen Studio, in consultation with other students, student organizations, and members of our diverse communities, write this letter as a final declaration of your mishandling of a racialized incident at the School of Architecture and Planning.

In May 2019, Associate Professor Brian Lilley used a racist slur while teaching and speaking to a group of students. Despite students surpassing all reasonable efforts to rebuke, correct, and manage the subsequent damages of his decisions, the School of Architecture has systematically concealed the event through avoiding reasonable resolution time, sidestepping corrective actions, obscuring facts, and avoiding transparent discussion. Instead, the School has held lengthy, unproductive individual and private meetings, and carelessly and injudiciously placed unreasonable physical and mental burden on students, specifically BIPOC students, seeking resolution. This is not an isolated incident of hate speech; The incident and subsequent mishandling reveals an intentional dismissal and avoidance on the part of the Dalhousie School of Architecture. This incident reveals that actions speak louder than words; The School of Architecture has not acted swiftly or responsibly. In safeguarding its own reputation and members of its Faculty and Administration, above the health and safety of its students and its diverse communities, the School has continued the systemic suppression of BIPOC students and has continued to foster an unsafe  learning environment for minority and marginalized students.

13 months ago, students asked for a transparent recognition of the incident and a public apology. They also asked to meet with the Professor, and a third-party mediator with the support of the School of Architecture and Dalhousie University. These initial requests were made in June 2019. A public apology is 13 months overdue. Brian Lilley, whose work “advocates for health and well-being of communities” has irreparably hurt the diverse communities within which he has assumed a leadership position and in which he has been appointed the role of Educator.

We demand that this issue of hate speech be handled immediately, and that work is done to correct the system which has allowed this issue to avoid resolution and which has continued to damage and suppress minority, marginalized, and BIPOC students


Signed,

Alexander Crosby, BEDS ‘19, M.Arch Candidate ‘21
Andrew Gilmour, BEDS ‘19, M. Arch Candidate ‘21
Beatrix Casiano, BEDS ‘19, M.Arch Candidate ‘21
Brennan Jelinski, M.Arch Candidate ‘21
Emily Thorpe, BEDS ‘19, M.Arch Candidate ‘21
Gabriel Coughlan, BSc[Arch] ‘18, M.Arch Candidate ‘21
Jennifer MacCoul, BEDS ‘19, M. Arch Candidate ‘21
Kaley Doleman, BEDS ‘19, M.Arch Candidate ‘21
Paulette Cameron, BEDS ‘19, M. Arch Candidate ‘21
Sarah Reid, BEDS ‘19, M.Arch Candidate ‘21
Sophia Baker, BEDS ‘19, M. Arch Candidate ‘22



APPENDIX

Outline

  1. The Incident: Summary of Events
  2. The School’s Lack of Response: words from DASA Executive
  3. Letter from Students of the Studio to BIPOC Students on lack of allyship


1. The Incident: Summary of Events


Brain Lilley is an Associate Professor at Dalhousie University School of Architecture and Planning. The event occurred during a Summer 2019 trip to Copenhagen, Denmark. Our studio dealt with topics of public architecture and immigration. Denmark has some of the worst immigration policies and practices in European Union. The studio visited Center Sandholm, the former military barracks north of Copenhagen and currently Denmark’s largest refugee camp. It was later revealed to us that part of the camp is more of a jail center for refugees after they have been rejected from Denmark and refuse to go back to their country of origin. In these jails, parents and children are basically incarcerated, not given proper food, education, play or medical attention. This sets the tone for the conversations most of the students were having during our trip. We will point out Brian Lilley did not facilitate any of these discussions nor give us adequate support in dealing with these complex issues.

One day the studio was having lunch in Reffen, Copenhagen, and a student was recounting a conversation with a cab driver from earlier that day. He was a person of colour and had lived in Denmark his entire life. The cab driver was explaining how he was mistreated in Denmark, like a second class citizen. The student relayed the conversational exchange and that the cab driver expressed his sense of pride for who he was and if others couldn't see his worth, that it was their loss. This is when Brian Lilley spoke up and said "N-word Pride", followed by “Oh I shouldn’t say that.” The students responded mostly with awkward silence, a few timidly saying, “No, you shouldn’t.” The response by students was more one of shock, and was weak and poorly navigated by the students present.

It wasn't until a few days upon return that some students went forward to the Director of the School of Architecture for resolution. The issue that students had was not in what context the word was said or what brief remorse was offhandedly stated afterwards, but that the term was used at all, without a formal apology.

Brian Lilley was told about the student response to the issue and initiated a meeting with the students. It was very weak. He said something along the lines of "someone said something that may have been taken offensively and it was not meant that way." In this meeting, he did not take accountability for his actions, but merely apologized if anyone was offended. He even went as far as to say that he asked his wife and children if they thought he was a racist. This demonstrated the inability for the professor to recognize his own internal bias, generations of oppression and damaging language. Moreover, it shows a flaw in the school’s approach to racialized incidents when they failed to inform the professor of the gravity of his mis-use of language aside from the intention behind using it. Brian Lilley’s inability to navigate this apology also shows School’s lack of awareness and training in addressing racialized incidents. The school failed the student body by neglecting to oversee the professor’s apology and by not having someone who is trained in these matters to sit in on his meeting to mediate the conversation with the studio.

In the weeks following the initial incident and over the summer semester, students asked for public apology and for the school to recognize and take responsibility for their actions. They were met with more private meetings which worked to diffuse the event and the students never received a recognition by the School of the gravity of what occurred. They never received a mediated meeting with the professor to reconcile that broken trust or the damage done through his language. Nor did they receive a formal apology.

The pattern of the length of time between students vocalizing their concerns each time and responsiveness from the Faculty worked strategically, as it bought the Administration time and allowed the emotion and the issue to die down. It resulted in a growing apathy that stemmed from frustration with the school’s inefficiency and exhaustion from the back and forth. In this way, the Studio students grew defeated and failed their fellow BIPOC students as non-allies (See Appendix 3 for their apology to BIPOC students). They demonstrated their privilege in their ability to move past the incident and decide to focus on finishing the turbulent semester. BIPOC students are not granted that privilege.


2. The School’s Extended Lack of Response: words from DASA Executive


Words from DASA Executive:

Words from DASA Executive:

As an executive in Dalhousie Architecture Student Association (DASA), it was brought to my attention in the first few weeks of my appointment that an incident occurred where a professor uttered a racial slur to their students, and that this was either not addressed or addressed very poorly within Dalhousie. With this information in hand, I asked the Director of the School of Architecture  (Diogo Burnay) if an apology statement could be prepared to address this incident. They were open to this idea but only felt comfortable going forward once Dalhousie’s Human Rights department advised us on how to draft the statement. This made sense so I agreed with their decision to wait on HR. This was in February, 2020.

In June, 2020, we finally received a response from the Human Rights office, who wanted to schedule a meeting with me to talk about how to resolve this incident. I met with a member of the HR department (Lisa Delong), who seemed hesitant in issuing a statement apologizing about this incident, and instead recommended the professor (Brian Lilley) apologize to the students who were present when the racial slur was uttered. I tried to make it clear that multiple students have asked DASA why the Faculty of Architecture has not publicly apologized for this incident. The derogatory comment affected students who were not present and has led to silent suffering. HR acknowledged this but still seemed to dismiss the idea of a public apology. We left the meeting with the idea to meet with the professor and his studio so that he (the professor) could apologize and then a statement would be issued later. However, this is the furthest the efforts to resolve this incident have gotten. I have emailed since and received no reply, which for over a month is absurd and disheartening. Therefore, it is with disappointment but necessity that I feel I must write this.



3. Letter from Students of the Studio to BIPOC Students on lack of allyship


Letter to BIPOC Students from the M1 studio students who heard the racial slur by a Member of Faculty,

This racist word was used by a white man in a position of power, and directed toward a group of largely white students. His being in a position of power and our own whiteness means that our non-response makes us complicit in systemic racism.

No one responded as an ally in the moment. Maybe because most of the students are more likely to perpetrate racism and are deeply involved in the doers of racism. Maybe because power is diffuse, embodied, enacted, and socialised. And our non-response reaffirms the idea that power comes from everywhere. In fact, in the moment we reaffirmed his power. I am sure there are many reasons. The short of it is that none of us responded or acted as an ally.

Our silence was an omission of action. Because of this inaction this incident of racism has prolonged and now it has placed a burden on you. That is not okay and it is unfair that students of colour are now brought into this incident, demanding action from the School of Architecture. Our response and automatic self-preservation needs to be addressed in our discussion with  Human Resources.

We want to reflect on the demonstration of our lack of allyship, not just in the moment but in the sequence of incidents that followed. We acknowledge the limited capacity of the students who tried to confront the situation and the school’s lack of response to the incident. None of the parties were equipped or took leadership to fully resolve this issue. We did not do the work as allies. And for that, We are sorry. We promise to gather the necessary tools to address racial issues, to follow through on this, and to try to do better individually and collectively.

After the incident of hate speech, the students reflected on how we handled the initial incident. Upset at our own silence, and frustrated not having the proper tools to respond besides a few utterances of disapproval in the moment, various students had contacted the school individually and collectively. We failed you, BIPOC Students, here:  1) By not going to the correct channel at Main Campus, Dalhousie, but instead staying within the Faculty of Architecture; 2) By not committing to doing the proper research on how to deal with it, but instead took an easier route of looking to an institution for answers, one that already demonstrated their desire to protect the faculty over accountability and one that did not have the self-awareness to recognize severity of the issue; 3) In this way, by hiding behind our whiteness and “safe zone” by seemingly following protocol, instead of following our ethical duty of righteous anger and noise-making.

We sat down with Brian Lilley for a meeting for an apology that lacked guidance and was severely insufficient. Students made attempts to explain the severity of the issue and to confront the professor’s lack of an informed apology at that moment. They shared that his language was problematic, and tried to demonstrate the gravity of his language despite his claim as to the intention behind the use of the term. They also asked him for accountability. In that meeting, the students were not heard. We failed you, BIPOC Students, here: 1) Not advocating for an outside party or mediator to be present; 2) Not entering that conversation equipped with the tools necessary to confront the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed students; 3) Acting out of fear and self-interest in not demanding more out of the professor for fear of disrupting the power imbalance with the grade-holder in a desire to maintain school performance; 4) Being satisfied with hostility towards him instead of coming out of the session with concrete action points; allowing emotion to be a cop-out instead of action.

After this meeting, unsatisfied, the students asked Diogo for more accountability. This session with Diogo was time consuming and unproductive. Again, the students felt that they spent the majority of the meeting convincing the administration of the severity of what happened and the necessity for follow through. Again, we failed you, BIPOC Students, here:  1) The meeting had an unclear objective and instead of solely addressing the racial slur incident, it became a sharing of varied griefs about the semester;  2) This sharing of our own personal griefs centered the discussion around ourselves; 3) We allowed the school to diffuse conflict through placation instead of remaining unsatisfied until we witnessed concrete action: we did not demonstrate endurance.

Finally, we failed in our inability to recognize 1) The pattern of the length of time between students vocalizing their concerns each time and responsiveness from the Faculty; in hindsight this was a strategy, unintentional or intentional, on the Administration’s part, to bide time and allow the emotion and the issue to die down. It was our responsibility to you and other BIPOC students to not let it die down. 2) We also failed to recognize within ourselves the growing apathy that stemmed from frustration with the school’s inefficiency and allowing ourselves to get exhausted by the back and forth and failing to continue the fight as allies. We allowed the lack of accountability and the lack of awareness by the school to be an excuse to not be allies  3) The privilege in our ability to move past this incident and decide to focus on finishing the turbulent semester. BIPOC students are not granted that privilege. As allies, we should have stood firm and not prioritized our success and comfort nor our emotional equilibrium over the fight for justice.

The thirteen months that we have allowed this to pass without proper and full follow through is our ethical culpability, not just the School’s. To the BIPOC students who took the racialized incident upon themselves to make noise to the school, we thank you for pointing out our own blind spots as the students who failed to act sufficiently which resulted in that burden falling on you. We also apologize, recognizing that our failure to properly ally with you has worked to cover up an overt act of racism. In allowing the burden to fall on you, you have had to face white privilege and ignorance (once again) that have allowed us to be complacent in the face of overt racism.

We hope that we will as a school, and we pledge as the students of that particular studio, to take the proper steps of reparation and eradication of overt, subtle, cultural and systemic racism within the school, and our personal and professional lives.

We know that apology is not enough. We also know that what we have included as a list of "our moments of failure as allies" will have blindspots. We ask that if you see voids in our perspective, please be honest and share, when or if you have time or desire. We do recognize that you do not owe us that. We will share these thoughts publically to take accountability for our actions, and so that students may learn from our inaction and not make the same mistakes we did.  We pledge to work harder to equip ourselves with the tools to be an ally. We cannot simply evade, but must resist, subvert, contest, and fight.