Hate-motivated vandalism, harassment, violence on campus a growing issue in Canadian PSE

The Star has published the findings of an investigation into hate-motivated vandalism, harassment, or violence on Canadian postsecondary campuses. The collaborative journalism project, co-ordinated by University of Toronto’s Investigative Journalism Bureau and Humber College’s StoryLab, found that over 500 incidents of hate-motivated vandalism, harassment, or violence have occurred on campuses across the country since 2004. These incidents rarely led to discipline against the perpetrators, reports The Star, in part due to factors such as incidents not meeting the threshold of a criminal charge and institutions being underequipped deal with the issues internally. “Hate has become normalized,” said Barbara Perry, director of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism at Ontario Tech University. “There’s sort-of an unwillingness to peel back the curtains. A lot of universities, A: they’re not transparent about their data and B: don’t quite know what to do with hate crime.”