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| Oksana Romanov |
I have lived through three name changes in less than two years. In the fall of 2019, I started a newly offered juris doctor degree at the Faculty of Law at Ryerson University. Last year, our inaugural cohort celebrated the Ryerson Faculty of Law’s renaming into the Lincoln Alexander School of Law. To no one’s surprise, our law school, being brand new, has experienced exponential growth and undergone some fantastic transformations; a name change is one of them. As a student body with diverse backgrounds and from all walks of life, we proudly continue the Honourable Lincoln Alexander’s legacy, who was a trailblazer and champion for racial equality and inclusive education. We are now proudly the Lincoln Alexander School of Law!
Fast-forward to 2022, and I am strictly a year away from completing this J.D. program as part of the first graduating class at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Toronto Metropolitan University. Let these three words sink in for a moment.
From Ryerson University through X University to Toronto Metropolitan University
What’s in a name? Everything! To me, renaming is a much awaited and welcome change. Last year, I witnessed a strong movement led by Indigenous students to use “X University” as our university’s name to renounce its colonial legacy. Many of us have followed their lead. As an ally, I do not intend to appropriate anyone’s voice or agency because I agree that the former name was polarizing and could no longer withstand the test of time and truth. There is no way around it: “Ryerson” is an unacceptable word. It embodies the trauma and harms that Indigenous people, including the members of this university, have experienced.
Yet, rewriting history is a fruitless task. We must acknowledge the wrongs and past harms. There is a value in acknowledging this traumatic piece of history, so we can work through it for as long as it takes before moving forward in any meaningful way. Without it, the past is doomed to repeat itself. Toronto Metropolitan University is doing exactly just that by having created a page dedicated to Ryerson’s legacy featuring Mash Koh Wee Kah Pooh Win/the Standing Strong Task Force Report. The task force has always been clear that their recommendations are about moving forward and recognizing the appropriate ways in which institutions acknowledge the legacy of historical figures and the belief systems that accompany them.
While the consultation process for the new name was underway, I remember receiving an e-mail with an invitation to participate in a survey and contribute my thoughts on values, meaning and a few potential names. Students were one of the multiple stakeholder groups. I felt valued and included.
I had several candidate names in mind, “City University of Toronto'” being one of them. It was my favourite because it had both “city” and “Toronto.” After all, we are in the heart of Toronto, surrounded by the vibrant yet vulnerable communities and bustling businesses, which we aspire to serve as future lawyers. As you can imagine, this hypothetical name and thousands of other names proposed through the stakeholder survey could have been contemplated but not used from either a value-based naming perspective or intellectual property concern, to name a few considerations. By way of legal information, a corporate entity must conduct an extensive name search, follow a specific corporate name structure, attempt to avoid pitfalls associated with infringing on other business names and, in general, comply with Ontario's Business Names Act, 1990, R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 62 as well as a federal piece of legislation, Trademarks Act, R.S.C., 1985.
In my opinion, the new name — Toronto Metropolitan University — is a meaningful welcomed change. It stands for everything we are: innovative, diverse, equitable, inclusive, metropolitan, bold, ambitious and unapologetic. You have my opinion, which is only one out of more than 300 law students as far as the opinions go. For me, this piece is an opportunity to reflect on my journey in law school and as a member of a broader university community. While we are all letting the new name sink in anticipation of what's to come, the future is bold, and it is already here.
Meet Toronto Met!
Next chapter: Toronto Metropolitan University
If you are looking for more information about the renaming process and the next steps, please visit the Next Chapter website. And here a few additional links recently put out by the university about the renaming:
- A new name for our institution
- The journey to reach Toronto Metropolitan University
- What you need to know now that the university has a new name
- Press release
Oksana Romanov is a 3L law student at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law in Toronto at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is an aspiring employment law lawyer and a summer legal student at Workly Law. To learn more about the author, you can visit her LinkedIn profile.
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