Students at Western were angered when they heard of a professor use the N-word during his lecture to get a reaction out of the students.
Professor Andrew Wenaus used the N-word after the screening of an episode from the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Most students in the class were Caucasian with only three black people. One of those students, Chizoba Oriuwa, spoke out about her experience on social media.
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- Chizoba’s Instagram story sharing her experience in lecture
This social media post was shared widely across Facebook and Instagram among student groups and timelines. The next morning Chizoba woke up to an inbox of emails from anonymous senders with hate mail using racial slurs and hate speech.
Post by Keren Annor with screenshots of emails sent to Chizoba anonymously
That afternoon, Western’s University Student Council along with other cultural and ethnic clubs on campus such as Ethnocultural Services, Black Student Association, African Student Association and Caribbean Student Association among others released a statement in regards to the incident.
Facebook post on University Students’ Council Page
A working group was then established with President Alan Shepard and students that were part of cultural clubs. Karen Annor, who was vocal on Facebook throughout the incident shared this post after the meeting.
Karen Annor’s post following the working group with Alan Shepard
Mubbashira Khalid, the coordinator of Ethnocultural Services said, “I think to create that impact and to create that change, you’re not going to always receive loving comments, but at the end of the day, these handful of emails were from people that disagreed with her. There were thousands and thousands of people who agreed with her and who supported her and who are here to fight her fight with her right. And so sometimes it’s the one or two bad apples that we are focused on.”
Most Londoners and students were surprised with this incident while there were few people who supported the Professor and said that it was okay to use the N-word when used academically.
This isn’t the first issue at Western that focused on race. Earlier this year in March, fourth-year MIT student Hannah Aviv, shared her experience on Facebook as well. As a Programming Assistant at Perth Hall, a residence at Western, Aviv said she felt “isolated and alone” in her home.
Hannah Aviv’s post on Facebook
“As the only Jewish person on the team, I obviously felt targeted. You think it’s going to happen but then when it actually does happen, it’s like a whole other experience”, Aviv shared.
Aviv believes that Western’s campus lack’s self-awareness and says most of the student body is “lucky” because they come from a place of privilege where they can’t be targeted for anything.
“To have something so important to you made fun of, your identity is essentially stripped away from you.”
Another student shared that she wasn’t surprised by the news about the professor using the N-word during lecture because several of her professors have done it in the past.
Third-year student, Charu Sharma shared that she has had numerous professors use the N-word during lectures so she wasn’t shocked but was repulsed with the incident because the professor used it to get a reaction out of the students.
“People of colour aren’t an experiment, you don’t use really triggering language that has a lot of historical influence and a lot of struggle behind it to get a reaction out of your students. I think that’s pretty immature” said Sharma.
Sharma also shared that in most of the lectures she’s the only person of colour (POC) and the burden falls on her to talk to the professors. She shared two incidences where her professors used the N-word in class and had different reactions from the professor.
She recollected and said that one of her professors was really defensive and said they used it to show that the word is “really bad”.
Sharma believes that the beginning to change starts with awareness but the next step is action.
“In terms of racial slurs or historically loaded language. The action that you have to take after that awareness is not saying it or understanding certain groups can say because of their racial struggles. I think its understanding that saying the N-word isn’t going to make the professor erase the history of it.”
