About Us
EIC commits to reporting on its own and other institutional activities to the Carleton community with the goal of marking progress against planning objectives.
Introduction
Since its inception in the late 1990’s, the department of Equity and Inclusive Communities has provided essential services to students, staff and faculty, as well as leading strategic and transformational institutional initiatives. Supporting the university’s commitment to creating an environment free of discrimination, harassment, and sexual violence. EIC provides confidential services to individuals who have experienced human rights violation or sexual violence. To strengthen an equitable and inclusive campus culture, EIC offers training and professional development to all Carleton community members and leads university-wide strategic initiatives such as the Carleton EDI Action Plan as well as the Honoring Each Other sexual violence prevention strategy.
Aspiration
EIC fosters the development of an inclusive and transformational university culture where individual distinctiveness and a sense of belonging for every member drive excellence in research, teaching, learning and working at Carleton. Such a culture facilitates cross-cultural and interdisciplinary collaboration, local and global engagement, as well as an environment of innovative intellectual inquiry where all can fulfil their potential. Our commitment strengthens connections and cohesion within and across university communities and throughout the institution.
Inclusive and transformational culture requires an environment free from discrimination, harassment and sexual violence where Indigenous ways of knowing and learning inform our systems and practices, and where equitable access to services and opportunities guides all university action.
Guiding Principles
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We will strive to ensure that all members of the community have access to services in accordance with the most appropriate accommodations.
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To realize aspirational values, the Department shall collaborate with partners across the university to promote structures, practices and cultures that elevate the abilities of all members to bring their whole authentic selves to research, teaching, learning and service. Attention to collaboration also expands the critical exercise of perspective, knowledge and experience-sharing so essential to innovation. The practice of collaboration is a form of inclusion.
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The Department shall keep confidential all case information given with an expectation of privacy except as required to be disclosed by university policies and procedures or as provided by law.
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Serving Carleton’s entire community of students, faculty and non-academic staff, the Department’s work is most effective when it is based in its pan-university aspirational values rather than in specific operational interests. This independence and impartiality are critical to the community’s perception of fairness and unbiased integrity with which the Department must conduct itself. The location of Equity and Inclusive Communities within the university’s structure reflects this relative organizational autonomy.
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We recognize that lived experience, particularly experiences of marginalization, may be informed and impacted by the multiple ways in which a person identifies or is identified. Identity may be derived from demographic dimensions that include Indigeneity, gender, race, ability, creed, age, socio-economic background, sexual and gender identity, gender expression, ethnicity and nationality.
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To achieve a culture of individual distinctiveness and belonging, approaches to enhance the inclusivity of structures, practices, and values must be shared, embraced and instilled across the university as a strategic priority. As institutional capacity grows, an inclusive culture becomes self-sustaining and ultimately, transformational.
Foundational Concepts
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The basic tenet of the Ontario Human Rights Code as it applies to the university is to ensure that all members may learn and work with dignity and have equal access to services and opportunities without discrimination or harassment on the grounds of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability. In certain contexts, the prohibited grounds extend to receipt of public assistance, and record of offences. Human Rights in Ontario are fundamental protections within a legislated framework.
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The principle of equity refers to fair access to opportunity and services for all, recognizing that members come to the university with relative advantages and disadvantages. Equity considerations advance on human rights protections by taking up issues of demographic representation and underrepresentation, and examine questions of power and resource allocation.
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Diversity in an institutional sense, describes the representation of various demographic segments and dimensions of identity within a population.
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Inclusion refers to the ongoing process of proactively cultivating difference so that each individual can bring their whole selves and achieve their full potential in service of common objectives.
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For members to bring their whole and authentic selves in the pursuit of personal and institutional excellence, as much value must be assigned to their attachments to multiple potential identities and distinct lived experiences as to their sense of belonging to a common enterprise. This concept of Inclusive Communities therefore extends our understanding of Carleton University as a community of communities.
Inclusive Communities is also a process and practice of cultivating the inherent distinctiveness of each of our members while nurturing and growing points of connection and cohesion. It is the enabling of exploration and discovery at the borders of ideas, values and experience. Residing at the heart of innovation, interdisciplinarity, collaboration and engagement, supporting Inclusive Communities is critical to our current and future success in a globalized higher education context.