UBC Opens Segregated ‘Identity-Affirming’ Lounge for Black Students

A woman and her dog walk past the UBC sign at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver on Apr. 23, 2019. The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward

The University of British Columbia (UBC) has opened a racially segregated lounge for black students, following in the footsteps of other universities in Canada.

The lounge was opened in the fall of 2023, according to the university’s website.

UBC describes the lounge as an “identity-affirming space” accessible only to black graduate and undergraduate students currently enrolled at the school.

“With the intention of creating a safer space, the Black Student Space celebrates the diversity and shared experiences within the Black community, and aims to foster a sense of belonging and wellbeing at UBC,” says the website.

The lounge offers students a private kitchen space, television, a “napping and resting” area with couches and a fireplace, showers, bathrooms, board games, and access to a library and printer.

The guidelines encourage students to use the space to celebrate diversity and prohibit “discrimination” of any kind.

“Conversations, language, or behaviors that involve discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurotype, physical appearance, body, age, colour, ethnicity, nationality, language, and/or religion are not acceptable.”

The Epoch Times reached out to UBC for comment but was redirected to the school’s website on the space.

UBC’s lounge follows similar moves from other universities, including Toronto Metropolitan University, which opened its lounge in 2022, and York University, which officially opened its lounge for black students in February 2023.

The University of Winnipeg also opened a designated space for racially diverse students in 2018, called the BIPOC lounge. BIPOC is a term used for black, indigenous, (and) people of colour, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

“The BIPoC lounge was started in 2018 because of the need for spaces at the University of Winnipeg to be inclusive of BIPoC individuals on campus and in the surrounding community,” the school’s website said.

‘Black’ Graduations

The decision to add separate spaces at universities follows the creation of separate graduation ceremonies for black students.

In 2021, Concordia University celebrated its first “Black Graduation” ceremony.

The event does not replace spring convocation, according to Concordia’s website, but is a unique ceremony that celebrates “Concordia’s Black graduates for their hard work, contributions and achievements, and to usher them into a strong network of fellow graduates, faculty, staff and alumni.”

“The ceremony takes place each year in mid June, falling closest to June 19, also known as Juneteenth, which celebrates the freedom of enslaved Black peoples in the United States at the end of the Civil War,” Concordia’s website says.

The University of Toronto (U of T) also hosts a graduation ceremony for black students, which was established in 2017.

“The event was created as an empowering celebration not just for the graduates, but also community members, to show them that black students can exist and succeed in a post-secondary institution,” U of T’s website states.

At TMU, the ceremony has been dubbed “Black Excellence Graduation Celebration,” and the school celebrated its fourth year of the event in 2023.

McMaster University held its first Black Graduation in 2022. The event was also held in 2023.