OCUFA’s Equity and Social Justice Committee (ESJC) began the 2023-2024 year with events signalling its commitment to a greater action orientation and engagement with current issues impacting members at the committee’s annual Equity Training Workshop and its first meeting of the year this fall. At a session called “Organizing for social justice and equity: Learning from OCUFA’s Contract Faculty Committee (CFC)” at the ESJC’s Annual Equity Training Workshop for new equity representatives, participants heard from OCUFA’s Engagement and Campaigns Coordinator Jordyn Perreault-Laird and Contract Faculty Committee member Kimberly Ellis-Hale (Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty Association) about the CFC’s annual Social Media Day of Action. Over the years, this Social Media Day of Action has helped to build awareness and support from the wider campus community for the issues facing contract faculty. Perreault-Laird and Ellis-Hale shared resources and facilitated a campaign-building exercise, leaving members excited and inspired to consider a similar campaign-based approach to highlighting common equity and social justice issues across campuses. The horrific attack on a gender studies professor and two students at Waterloo University at the end of June was a painful reminder of the challenges of doing equity work.
