THUNDER BAY -- The Office of Human Rights and Equity at Lakehead University is reaching out to students, faculty and staff to find out how to make the campus a safer and more accessible environment.
Director Dreeni Geer is looking for volunteers to serve as "auditors" to do walkarounds in buildings and spaces, armed with a checklist that asks questions to understand if users feel welcome and comfortable.
Geer said the project is not the result of any specific assault or other incident, although she added "we do have some buildings where we've had a couple of incidents happen...We'd just like to have our incident rate down to zero."
Noting that her office is fairly new, she said "When we chatted with student groups and we looked at things that had been going on we said 'You know, we need to show students and all the users of the campus that we're very interested in their experiences and what they feel in different spaces.' "
Geer said a lot of the people at Lakehead are new to the university, and may not know whether it's safe to into a certain building at night, or whether there's appropriate lighting. "We just want to do a sort of double-check and make sure that users have a voice in this."
She hopes to attract as diverse a group of participants as possible.
"We really encourage people who are persons with disabilities, people who are racialized, Indigenous persons, LGBTQ2 people to also come out, because we know that every user has a different experience, and definitely people from equity-seeking groups have different needs and spaces, and have different safety needs."
Geer said safety audits are premised on the notion that users are often the experts on both the problems and the solutions for creating protective and inclusive environments.
At the end of the exercise, she expects to report to the university's senior administration on where some "easy fixes" might be made, as well as other changes that might require a bigger investment.
