During Fall 2025, we invited York faculty, staff, students, alumni, and retirees to share with us what they saw as meaningful equity-related events in York’s history. All of the events on here were suggested by a York community member.

Anyone can anonymously comment on a current milestone. We will collect these comments as a way of understanding the different feelings and meanings that community members associate with a milestone. We may use this information in reports and to understand community members’ priorities.

This project was initiated by Laina Bay-Cheng when she was in the role of Vice-President of the Division of Equity, People & Culture (EPC). In her research, she often used timelines and “life history calendars” as a methodological technique for not only eliciting information from participants, but also facilitating their reflection and meaning-making. Drawing on that research experience and together with Amy Gaukel, the Executive Officer of EPC, Laina developed the York Equity Timeline as a participatory, community-based way to collect and share information about progress related to York’s DEDI Strategy as well as the history that preceded the DEDI Strategy. They hired Maria Pineros, a York alumna, to design and lead the site’s development. Laina, now in the role of Interim Provost & Vice-President, Academic, continues to work closely with Amy and others in EPC on the York Equity Timeline. 

Milestones may be small but meaningful moments, large-scale initiatives, or pivotal events. They may be focused on a particular social issue, identity group, or academic/staffing unit or have relevance across issues, identities, and York as a whole. We are eager to hear about any and all of these. This will help us create a timeline that reflects the diverse perspectives and experiences of York’s diverse community.

Anyone who identifies as a part of York’s wider community, including alumni, retirees, and partners. Milestones can be suggested https://tinyurl.com/AddAMilestone 

Importantly, the survey asks for your name and connection to York. We will keep this completely confidential, but want to make sure that the York Equity Timeline is being built by members of the University’s community. 

We are designing the website now and then will fill it in with the milestones we are collecting now. We plan to launch the site in Winter 2026. On the site, people will be able to see different milestones, react and comment, and get a sense of the events that have shaped York.

We created the York Equity Timeline as a way of collectively telling and reflecting on the history of how equity has evolved at York. Our hope is that the Timeline will offer a different perspective on steps we have taken as a University toward becoming more equitable and that this perspective will also help us see the path forward, too.  

We will also update the Timeline with new milestones that people share, and use the reactions and comments to create reports so that others can understand how equity at York has developed over time. 

The definition of equity that we use for this project is: promoting fair treatment, access, and opportunity for all by addressing systemic barriers and recognizing individual differences. We wanted to use a “big tent” definition of equity given the size and diversity of York’s community and the size and scale of social change that has occurred since York’s founding in 1959.

These are absolutely important and have a place on the York Equity Timeline! The Timeline grew out of our DEDI Strategy, after all. We chose to only use “equity” in naming the Timeline for several reasons.

• First, we see things like diversity, inclusion, accessibility, justice, decolonization, reconciliation, and rights as indivisible from “equity”: they are not possible if we are not also striving for equity… and of course, equity is not possible without them! So by referring only to equity, we don’t mean to exclude or discount these other values and goals.  

• Second, since the Timeline is for the entire York community, we wanted to use a word that would be accessible and meaningful to as many people as possible. Even though some people know exactly what shorthand like “DEDI” means, others may not be familiar with it or may have preconceived notions about it.  

• Also, once you start a list, it is hard to know when and how to stop! For instance, some people see “DEDI” and wonder why it doesn’t refer to “justice” or “accessibility.” Rather than trying to list everything (and having a very long title or acronym) or frustrating people by what we left out, we decided to use just one word that is as accessible and inclusive as possible.  

• Finally, as the Timeline itself shows, words change. The pursuit of equity and justice is part of York’s institutional DNA, though the words we have used to talk about this have changed. We didn’t want to use words or phrases (e.g., DEDI) that are too attached to a particular moment in time.