This semester EDI Student Assistant Samara Lijiam sat down with the School of GraduateThis is a headshot of Jane Mao from the shoulders up. They are looking at the camera smiling.  and Professional Studies (SGPS) Equity & Diversity Commissioner Jane Mao to discuss their take on equity at Queen’s. They explored Jane’s journey to graduate school, and what they learned looking back on their Queen’s experience. Jane began their involvement in groups like the Education on Queer Issues Project, the Committee Against Racial and Ethnic Discrimination and the Queen’s Coalition Against Racial and Ethnic Discrimination. After co-starting the Gender Affirming Assistance Project in 2020, Jane began to address the institutional side of equity through their work in the SGPS. Learn more about Jane below:

Please outline the work that the SGPS Equity Commission does, and what some past highlights have been.

There are two branches to this role, there is the committee side where I sit on committees like University Council on Anti-Racism and Equity (UCARE), the steering committee for hate crimes,  education based committees, and more. Then the other aspect of the role is more community outreach based, that part is really really open so you can do whatever you want with this position. What I did was focus on the name pronounciation project in the Faculty of Education. This started with the EDI committee in the Department of Psychology. Essentially, faculty are able to have the phonetic and audio recording of their name integrated on their profile on their department’s website. Names are really important to people's core identities and unfortunately a lot of racialized and marginalized names are butchered and this would help bypass those errors.  Now, when people go to click on their name, they can hear how it is pronounced. 

 

What are your biggest plans/ goals this year in your role? What should students be looking forward to?

I want to scale the name pronounciation project across the university. What I am also really really excited for is working with our insurance person who negotiates our coverage, to include care specific to marginalized people. So having gender affirming care directly integrated into our insurance plan and having a more robust mental health plan knowing the intersections of mental illness, colonialism racial oppression, gender oppression, etc. I am really excited to help with the negotiations for student coverage in the future. 

 

The second thing that I'm really excited about is to bring forward a student bursary fund specifically to acknowledge and appreciate the hard work of individuals within their advocacy work. So that means providing honorariums, that means providing bursaries for individuals to actually value their work.  This is all student related so this is going to be quite a large scale project. 

 

What motivated you to get involved with equity work at Queens? What is your personal approach to equity work?  

I think quite selfishly I was motivated because there were honestly a lot of things happening in my life that I wanted verbiage for, that I wanted to understand a bit more and that I wanted to find community for. I felt really isolated in some of the situations that I was put in, and even at that point I wasn't able to describe why certain things are happening. I can say now that certain things were happening because of racism, white fragility,, misogyny, etc., but I wasn't able to describe that before and the people who actually stood by my side and understood and just stood with me were people who were involved in equity work. I wanted to learn a bit more about the things that I was experiencing. 

 

My personal approach now isn’t so selfish, it is to give back to those people who were initially able to take me in. Because I was able to learn more about myself, but I was also able to learn about other communities and other issues happening with people with identities that I don’t have. It is rooted deep down in community needs, and really working to satisfy those. I think a lot of people get so theoretical and so academic, but when someone wants something and you can help move money around you should fix it, or solve it or just support them. My personal approach is definitely more holistic now, and is definitely more realist. It is a critical realist approach to “we live in these institutions, we have to navigate what we see right now - how can I help?”. 


 

As someone who did their undergraduate at Queen’s as well, how has your approach and experiences in equity changed overtime? Do you have the same approach to your work now as you did in your first year?

When I was first getting involved in equity work, because I got involved so late I was trying to learn every single theory, complexity and discourse - all at once. I was so academic with everything! Because when you are in these spaces, unfortunately, there is a lot of classism and ableism and you have to be able to prove yourself and use academic jargon in order to be considered “valid”. You have to be able to understand things like queer theory, orientalism, strategic essentialsim - before people can take you seriously. 

 

Now, knowing what these words mean and being able to critique theory, I can see that you don’t need academics. You can have it to contextualize a lot of experiences, that can be super powerful, but to only use academia and to only focus on the academic realm in your activism is so violent. So that’s why I left institutional roles for a bit and why I did more community based roles of just “someone needs something, and I’m going to help them obtain that something or support them” - it is so direct, you are on the frontlines addressing what you see happening in front of you. I am learning it is really important to know how to leverage power where you need, but at the same time not further perpetuate violence, through things like jargon. I learned that I had to do the mental gymnastics of being palatable, assertive and smart while also being approachable and understanding - it's so much work and that's definitely something that I didn’t do when I first started!

 

As someone who has been on campus for several years, what advice would you give to students hoping to positively impact Queen’s culture? 

If I eat, you eat - if I am in a position of power I think I should always leverage my power to help my community. Recognize the power that you have, recognize how you can leverage it and while you do this recognize and situate your positionality. Because it is really important to realize that if you are rising through the ranks and are in a leadership position or have power, you are probably within a place of privilege. Whether that is because you are really palatable, whether that’s because you have the executive functioning to apply to bursaries and apply to positions, what have you - recognize that you have this power and try to find ways to use it to help your community. Because someone likely at one point recognized that you might not have had power and probably needed it.


 

What/ who are your inspirations? This can be people, books, movies or ideas that influenced you?

All About Love by bell hooks is something that I like reading - with every single paragraph in that book you learn something new. It really slaps you but also heals you. Anything by Mariame Kaba - any of her articles or books I would really recommend. 

 

But also, for the day to day, what really really inspires me is - and this might sound weird - but it’s when I see really angry people of colour. Because rarely do people of colour actually become angry and when I see them angry and actually express themselves, I love that. Because I know actually expressing your anger and actually expressing your emotions is something that we’ve been told not to do. I know part of their inner child is so happy that they are able to voice these things. And that makes me happy knowing that their inner child is thriving. 

 

What do you want to see done this year (across campus) from administration and student leaders to support marginalized students? What do you think needs to happen to make Queen’s a more equitable place?

On the admin level, I want to see more access to financial support for students. We are working on a student bursary in the SGPS, but I shouldn’t be doing that. We need to see that on an admin level, and we need to see that be a lot more consistent. We also need to see that for graduate students and undergraduate students. 

 

I also think we need a lot more people in hired, long, tenured positions with an anti-racist mindset to make Queen’s a bit more equitable. We need more diversity on committees, we need more profs of colour, we need more people at Student Wellness Services that are racialized. We just need more people in long term permanent positions with anti-racist mindsets and goals for Queen’s to be a bit more equitable.