By Katherine Gauthier
It’s Monday evening and Darren Cooney sits in his room with friends sipping wine and celebrating his birthday. Posters of muscular men and colourful triangles are plastered on his wall.
But earlier that day, Cooney, who’s running for a spot on RyeSAC’s board of directors, received a shocker of a birthday gift. At least seven of his posters in South Kerr Hall had been defaced. The words gay, queer, ass and fag were written on them with pencil.
“It was really hurtful at first, and it really angered me because I though I had gotten away from all of that,” says Cooney, a first-year journalism student and RyePride coordinator. “I don’t understand why, at a university with so many gay people, people would be so hateful, so ignorant.”
Wendy Roberts, manager of the office of discrimination and harassment prevention services, says the poster defacing is being investigated.
The board of directors elections are next Tuesday. Coney hopes the poster incidents will not hurt his campaign.
“Sexuality has nothing to do with the way I can do a job on the board of directors,” he says. “Now [the defacing] is just firing me up. I have to use it as fuel in my fight for diversity and equality here at Ryerson.”
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