How to Waste Money - New Performative Arts by Ryerson University

If you haven't caught wind of the latest performative visual arts in Toronto, you can visit 350 Victoria Street, formerly known as Ryerson University. Yes, formerly, they have completely rebranded themselves, now the university is known as Toronto Metropolitan University.

The name change was deemed necessary by the “Standing Strong Task Force” at Ryerson University that was created to understand and reconcile Egerton Ryerson's history and his relationship to the school and students. Through petitions and surveys, they called for the rebranding of Ryerson University because of Egerton Ryerson’s involvement with residential schools - no surprise there since the legacy media has been exacerbating the issue with false claims of unmarked graves of children near residential schools.

Therefore, the board of directors thought it was appropriate to completely rebrand themselves despite the lack of evidence as to how this will help the indigenous populus at Ryerson University or if this is a financially sound idea in comparison to alternatives that may better the educational experience of Ryerson students. More importantly, there must have been a reason why the university was named after Egerton Ryerson other than his involvement with residential schools.

According to The Canadian Encyclopedia and Ryerson University, Egerton Ryerson was the “founder of Ontario’s public education system” and established a “system of free, mandatory schooling at the primary and secondary level - the forerunner of Ontario’s current school system.” This is the same person that believed “poverty should not be a roadblock to education and that Canada West should have a free and mandatory public educational system.” When you take into account the recorded history of the individual figure in question, it’s not so easy to be one-sided. The fact that every Canadian has the opportunity to have free education is because of Egerton Ryerson. I truly believe this is something to be commemorative about, despite his involvement with residential schools.

Except that is what people are focusing solely on, his involvement with residential schools despite his achievements that have benefitted every Canadian since 1846. Even so, I don’t understand how changing the name of the university actually brings any real wealth or change to the indigenous population at Ryerson University or the community around it. The name change is nothing but performative activism, a marketing scheme if you will, to virtue signal to the public about how moral and progressive and reconciliatory they are towards the indigienous population of Canada. To protect their reputation even if there is zero evidence of the benefits of the name change, nor does it address the false claims (as said before) of the unmarked graves of children near the residential schools (no evidence whatsoever, True North covered this already in great detail).

I am almost certain if they were to fully disclose the amount of money spent on rebranding their name to Toronto Metropolitan University (Some have estimated between $200,000 to over $1 million - I believe it to be the latter) students and faculty would be furious as the money could have been used for better uses. There is always an opportunity to better the educational experience for students - than changing the name of the university. That does absolutely nothing.