The University of Toronto has committed to continuously collect race-based data from its students, the Star has learned, unprecedented among post-secondary institutions in Ontario.

The undertaking by Canada’s largest university comes amidst a broader effort to tackle a lack of representation in the lecture hall among some groups and lend hard numbers to the push for equity in the public realm.

Angela Hildyard, U of T’s vice-president for human resources and equity, hopes to see the online census rolled out next fall for the incoming crop of students.

“We’re trying to be as comprehensive and progressive as we can . . . We’re trying to be much more reflective of our own community,” Hildyard said.

The voluntary survey will likely reveal “significant under-representation of black faculty and staff,” she said, noting the new stats could be used to gauge disparities and inform recruitment policies.

Young black leaders, whose demands helped secure the university’s pledge, embrace it as a positive move toward equity in the halls of higher education — one that trumps fears of latent stereotyping revived by the prospect of racial categorizing.

“There is still so much work to be done, but we’re welcoming this as an exciting first step in creating a campus where black students feel safe and welcomed,” said Yusra Khogali, a U of T student and member of the Black Liberation Collective, a campus protest movement with local chapters across North America. “We hope to see work like this replicated at other institutions.”

Black Lives Matter co-founder Sandy Hudson said the news has “great potential” for overcoming barriers, from student diversity to program content.

The survey will allow students to self-identify with one or several ethnic backgrounds and check off racial identities drawn from Statistics Canada, ranging from Black to Chinese, South Asian, and Latin American. Students can also specify a racial background other than the roughly dozen listed.

The info would be gleaned — from all 85,000 students eventually — as part of a broader demographic data harvest that reaps information on students’ gender identity, sexual identity, religion and other areas — all largely uncharted territory for post-secondary institutions at this scale.

Carl James, director of the York Centre for Education and Community, thinks crunching numbers in fields from education to incarceration is key to confronting prejudice. “The data is critical,” he said.

Detailed demographic statistics, including information on race, is routinely collected in U.S. schools and universities. The fact that racial data-tracking breaks new ground up north speaks to deeply rooted attitudes toward race in Canada, says James.

“We have tended to think as Canadians that race is something we don’t live by or identify people with, when in fact we do,” James said.

David Robinson, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, notes that “anecdotally” there seems to be a ghettoization of certain groups in particular disciplines. “Women for instance are highly concentrated in the social sciences, almost invisible in engineering. And I think there are parallels with racialized minorities.

“Right now there’s not a lot of data collection that’s going on across the country to evidence that,” Robinson said.

Administrators plan to unroll the census on the heels of a revamped employment equity survey for faculty and staff.

That bare-bones questionnaire, in place for several years and filled out by incoming employees, currently lists no racial categories beyond “visible minority” or “racialized.” For gender identity, “transgendered” can soon be ticked off alongside more traditional boxes.

“Using ‘racialized’ or ‘visible minority’ actually makes black people become invisible. A faculty could be racially diverse and have no black people,” said Rajean Hoilett, head of the Canadian Federation of Students’ Ontario chapter. Hoilett said he approves of U of T’s upcoming info cull.

Responding to any one question would not be mandatory on the self-reported survey, Hildyard noted. The information would be available publicly in aggregate, with students’ individual responses remaining confidential.

The Council of Ontario Universities confirmed no universities in the province have a central process in place to continuously collect race-related data.

Both the Canadian Universities Survey Consortium and Colleges Ontario survey a sampling of students periodically. In 2006, Queen’s University offered a colour-coded snapshot of its freshman class.

Many post-secondary institutions track the number of aboriginal students, first-generation Canadians and disabled individuals to connect them with various services.

York University, reputed for its diverse undergraduate population and progressive policies, is now mulling a similar survey. The institution already collects data on sexual orientation during enrolment.

“York is in the early stages of examining how the self-identification surveys and processes for its faculty, staff and students could be enhanced in the future,” said spokesperson Janice Walls.

How events unfolded:

The University of Toronto’s stats-tracking scheme, under consideration by the university for a couple years, found clarity on a foggy winter evening two months ago.

About 10 members of the Black Liberation Collective walked between the Corinthian columns of Simcoe Hall, the president’s ivy-laced building, to meet with three top university administrators on Dec. 7.

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“We agreed that we do need to do better,” said equity vice-president Angela Hildyard.

Yusra Khogali, who sits on the collective, says the group views the census as a “victory” which will provide hard evidence “that there is anti-blackness embedded this institution.”

Barriers remain, including tension between student groups and administrators. “We felt as if they were scared of us. That was the aura in the room,” said Khogali. “That’s problematic if we want to work to implement policies of equity that improve the entire quality of life for everyone in the institution.”

The meeting came in the wake of #BlackOnCampus student demonstrations at four universities across the province on Nov. 18.

Colour-coded data and public institutions:

Toronto police:

1989: Toronto’s police service board bans police from analyzing and reporting race-based statistics over fears the information could be misused and further harm already stigmatized communities.

2000: The Star requests a breakdown of arrests and criminal charges by race, to which police comply.

2002: The Star publishes a report that shows black people in certain circumstances are treated more harshly, prompting a libel lawsuit by the Toronto Police Association that was eventually dismissed by the Supreme Court of Canada.

2010: A Star analysis of six years’ worth of data on “carding” — stopping people on the street at random to collect personal information — shows black people are three times more likely to be subjected to the street checks than white people.

2010: The 1989 policy is rewritten to allow police in certain circumstances to analyze race-base crime statistics, a common practice in many U.S. states and nationally mandated in the United Kingdom.

Toronto schools and children’s aid groups:

2004: Toronto school board trustees narrowly approve a student census, now administered every five years. It includes demographic questions on racial, ethnic and sexual identity, offering multiple lenses through which to examine student achievement.

2006-2007: Black students are three times more likely to be suspended than white students, according to census data released to the Star by the Toronto board in 2013. The board is one of a small number in Ontario to track demographic data.

2015: Donna Quan — former director of the Toronto District School Board turned adjunct education professor at York University — begins to assess the feasibility of all provincial school boards collecting detailed demographic data on their students.

2015: The Children’s Aid Society of Toronto starts to collect and make public race-based data. The policy comes on the heels of a Star investigation revealing a disproportionate number of aboriginal and black children were taken from their families and placed into care.

2016: The Ontario Human Rights Commission calls for the Ministry of Children and Youth Services to track race-related data, echoing requests from a long list of agencies and community groups. Children’s Minister Tracy MacCharles said a year ago she would consider the idea, but has not directed children’s aid societies to collect and report the data.