Brock’s Equity Census is a voluntary, short, confidential survey that will give us a better understanding of the current makeup of the campus community.

Brock is strongly committed to fostering a culture of inclusivity, accessibility, reconciliation and decolonization. By conducting an Equity Census, we’ll get a better understanding of the makeup of the campus community and be better able to track our progress in becoming a more equitable and diverse place.

The Equity Census will also play a key role in the development of Brock’s Employee Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy, which will help identify and remove barriers in Brock’s existing employment practices and aid the institution in advancing equity and diversity in the workplace.

Equity Census data is carefully protected. It is confidential will not be shared with hiring managers. All information collected as part of the Equity Census is handled in accordance with Brock’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy policy and the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act of Ontario.

Your information will be anonymized/de-identified/aggregated for reporting and analysis purposes. Access to identifiable information will be restricted to designated individuals in Institutional Planning, Analysis and Performance and the Office of People and Culture who have been assigned responsibility for employment equity reporting. Their access to the identifiable information will be governed by strict security protocols and routinely audited.

In addition, the University has agreed to provide the Brock University Faculty Association with the number of faculty members and professional librarians who have self-identified as members of each designated group, as set out in Article 20.01(a) of the collective agreement between the Parties. The information will be organized by each Faculty and the Library.

The census is being developed by seeking permission from individuals to collect only that personal information which is helpful to advancing our community’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Strategy (EDI).

The census collects information on Racial Identity, Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, (Dis)Ability, Age, Belief System(s), as an extension of the University’s commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging. The University collects this information as it can help to develop employment equity strategies that eliminate additional barriers to employment based on these identities. The information collected from these questions is reported in an anonymized aggregate form. Requests for more detailed reports on these identities will not be granted.

In developing the strategy for this work, data ownership was a key consideration. The Equity Census Team knows it is critical to respect that decisions about sharing personal information are a matter of the owner’s personal choice.

The University’s approach is one rooted in integrity and transparency. The University will only use demographic information in the ways described at the time the data is collected; any proposed change in use of personal information will require clear and complete communication with the owners and must include the individual owner’s consent to such use.

Data collected in the Equity Census will be analyzed and used exclusively for the purpose of advancing the University’s EDI goals.

The identifiable information will be used to produce anonymized aggregate reports that will be provided to university leaders and others in the Brock community who require the information for planning employment equity strategies in their respective areas.

The anonymized aggregate reports will also be available to the broader Brock community for the purposes of information sharing and progress updates on inclusive excellence initiatives.

The collected information shall only be used and assessed by Institutional Planning Analysis & Performance in support of decision making by the University in alignment with the Employment Equity Policy.

The identifiable information collected in the census will be stored in a secure, isolated table in Qualtrics with safeguard protocols to prevent unauthorized access or disclosure. The census data is kept separate from your employee records.

The University will collect personal information using methods that are accessible and culturally appropriate for the question(s) under study.

Aggregated and de-identified information from the Equity Census will be published to help the University to understand and eliminate barriers to post-secondary education and ensure support for all our students.

The anonymized aggregate reports are done in such a manner that minimizes the risk of identifying any individual.

Ableism: reflects dominant perspective that privilege the able body as the unquestioned norm, often placing negative social value on populations that do not conform. Ableism creates social and cultural permissions to devalue a population and impacts the creation of environments, behaviours, attitudes and social policy.

Agender:  Someone who does not identify with any gender or does not see themselves as aligning with all or any masculine or feminine characteristics. Other terms include gender neutrois, gender-neutral, or genderless.

Anti-Racism: Anti-racism is the active practice of identifying, challenging and changing the values, structures and behaviors that perpetuate systemic racism. It involves challenging and changing systems, organizational structures, policies and practices and attitudes, so that power is redistributed and shared equitably. (Adopted from the Ontario Anti-Racism Directorate and NAC International Perspectives: Women and Global Solidarity).

Asexual: A person who experiences little or no sexual attraction to people of any gender.

Auditory Disability: The partial or total inability to hear. Also known as hearing impairment, this condition includes permanent or fluctuating hearing problems. Auditory impairment can range from slight and mild to severe and profound.

Bigender: of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity is a combination of more than one gender or is sometimes one gender and sometimes another gender

Bisexual: A person who is attracted to people of more than one gender.

Cisgender: A person whose gender identity is in alignment with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Cognitive Disability: When a person has trouble remembering, learning new things, concentrating, or making decisions that affect their everyday life. Cognitive impairment ranges from mild to severe.

Demisexual: Someone who has little to no sexual attraction to others unless a strong emotional connection is formed, while romantic attraction may form more easily.

Disability: Under the medical model, this term refers to a limitation or loss of physiological abilities, whether apparent or not. These can be physical, cognitive, learning, and visual disabilities. Under the social model, disability is identified as a disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by systemic barriers, negative attitudes, and exclusion by society.

Discrimination: Any form of unequal treatment based on a ground protected by human rights legislation, that results in disadvantage, whether imposing extra burdens or denying benefits. Discrimination can be intentional or unintentional; and it may occur at an individual or systemic level. It may include direct actions or more subtle aspects of rules, practices and procedures that limit or prevent access to opportunities, benefits, or advantages that are available to others.

Diversity: A quality by which an institution can gauge its positive or negative representation relative to its broadest possible Canadian socio-cultural environment.

EDI: An acronym for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.

Equality: The practice of ensuring equal treatment to all people, without consideration of individual and group diversities.

Equity: The goal of equity is to achieve inclusiveness and social and economic justice through recognition, respect, numerical representation, accountability, responsibility and the development of balanced, healthy and harmonious working environments.

Equity Deserving Group: A group of people who, because of systemic discrimination, face barriers that prevent them from having the same access to the resources and opportunities that are available to other members of society, and that are necessary for them to attain just outcomes.

Ethnicity: A socially defined category or membership of people who may share a nationality, heritage, language, culture, and/or religion.

Evident Disability: Any impairment that is visible through features, interactions, or through the use of an assistive device.

Fluid: Sexual fluidity might include changes in attractions (someone may be attracted to one gender at one point in time and attracted to a different gender or more than one gender at another point in time), changes in identity labels (someone may identify as lesbian at one time point and as bisexual at another time point), and/or changes in sexual behaviour (someone may have a sexual partner at one time point who is a cisgender woman and then have another sexual partner at a different time point who is nonbinary).

Gay: A man who is attracted to men.

Gender: Gender can refer to the individual and/or social experience of being a man, a woman, or neither. Social norms, expectations and roles related to gender vary across time, space, culture, and individuals.

Genderfluid: Gender fluidity conveys a wider, more flexible range of gender expression, with interests and behaviours that may change from day to day. Gender fluid people do not feel confined by restrictive boundaries of stereotypical expectations of women or men. In other words, they may feel they are a woman some days and a man on others, or possibly feel that neither term describes them accurately.

Genderqueer: Individuals who do not follow gender stereotypes based on the sex they were assigned at birth. They may identify and express themselves as “feminine men” or “masculine women” or as androgynous, outside of the categories “boy/man” and “girl/woman.”

Harassment: A course of comments or actions, such as unwelcome attention, jokes, threats, remarks, namecalling, touching or other behaviours that are known, or ought reasonably to be known, to be unwelcome, offensive, embarrassing, humiliating or demeaning. Harassment under human rights legislation is based on the prohibited/protected grounds.

Heterosexual: A person who is attracted to people of the opposite gender.

Inclusion: An approach that aims to reach out to and include all people, honouring the diversity and uniqueness, talent, beliefs, backgrounds, capabilities and ways of living of individuals and groups.

Indigenous Peoples: An umbrella term for self-identified descendants of pre-colonial/pre-settler societies. In Canada these include the First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples as separate peoples with unique heritages, economic and political systems, languages, cultural practises, and spiritual beliefs. While the collective term has offered a sense of solidarity among some indigenous communities, the term should not serve to erase the distinct histories, languages, cultural practices, and sovereignty of the more than fifty nations that lived in Canada prior to European colonization.

Intersectionality: The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage. (Oxford Dictionary)

Intersex: A person born with sex characteristics (chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals) that do not fit the typical medical definitions of male or female bodies.

Learning Disability: A number of disorders which may affect the acquisition, organization, retention, understanding or use of verbal or nonverbal information. These disorders affect learning in individuals who otherwise demonstrate at least average abilities essential for thinking and/or reasoning.

Lesbian: A woman who is attracted to women.

Man (cis, trans): A person whose gender identity may correspond with social expectations associated with being a man and/or masculine. People who identify as men may be cis (gender identity ‘matches’ birth assigned sex) or trans (gender identity is different from birth assigned sex).

New Canadian: A recent immigrant to Canada.

Non-Binary: Individuals who do not follow gender stereotypes based on the sex they were assigned at birth.  They may identify and express themselves as “feminine men” or “masculine women” or as androgynous, outside of the categories “boy/man” and “girl/woman”. People who are non-binary may or may not identify as trans.

Non-Disabled: refers to someone who does not have a disability.

Non-Evident Disability: any physical, mental, or emotional impairment that goes largely unnoticed. Can include cognitive impairment and brain injury; the autism spectrum; chronic illnesses like multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, and fibromyalgia; d/Deaf and/or hard of hearing; blindness and/or low vision; anxiety, depression, PTSD, and many more.

Pansexual: A person who is attracted to other people regardless of gender.

Persons with Disabilities: Those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.

Physical Disability: Any degree of physical disability, infirmity, malformation or disfigurement that is caused by bodily injury, birth defect or illness.

Queer: An umbrella term used and reclaimed by some whose sexual orientations and/or gender identities fall outside of cisgender/heterosexual norms.

Questioning: A period where a person explores their own sexual identity, orientation, and/or gender.

Race: Culturally or socially constructed divisions of humankind, based on distinct characteristics that can be based on: physicality, culture, history, beliefs and practises, language, origin, etc. Racial discrimination is prohibited within Canada as part of the Canadian Human Rights Act, and the United Nations has a committee devoted to the elimination of racial discrimination.

Racialized Persons: Referring to a person or group of people categorized according to ethnic or racial characteristics and subjected to discrimination on that basis.

Racism: An ideology that establishes a hierarchy between races or ethnic groups. Prejudice, hostility, discrimination, and even violence, whether conscious or not, against persons of a specific race or ethnic group.

Sexual Orientation: The direction of one’s attraction. Some people use the terms gay, bi, pan, or lesbian to describe their experience.

Transgender: An umbrella term referring to people whose gender identities differ from the sex they were assigned at birth. “Trans” can mean transcending beyond, existing between, or crossing over the gender spectrum. It includes but is not limited to people who identify as transgender, transsexual, non-binary or gender non-conforming (gender variant or genderqueer).

Two-Spirit: An umbrella term encompassing gender and sexual diversity in Indigenous communities. Two Spirit people often serve integral and important roles in their communities, such as leaders and healers. There are many understandings the term Two Spirit – and this English term does not resonate for everyone. Two Spirit is a cultural term reserved for those who identify as Indigenous.

Visual Disability: A term experts use to describe any kind of vision loss, whether it’s someone who cannot see at all or someone who has partial vision loss.

Woman (cis, trans): A person whose gender identity may correspond with social expectations associated with being a woman and/or feminine. People who identify as women may be cis (gender identity ‘matches’ birth assigned sex) or trans (gender identity is different from birth assigned sex).

Brock University protects your privacy and your Personal Information.  The Personal Information requested in this census is collected under the authority of the Brock University Act, 1964, section 3, and in accordance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (“FIPPA”). The information will be used by Brock University for the purpose of implementing an employee equity program as part of the University’s strategic priority of fostering a culture of inclusivity, accessibility, reconciliation and decolonization. The personal information collected in the census will be handled in compliance with the University’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Policy. Contact the Equity Census team at equitycensus@brocku.ca if you have questions or concerns.