Being First in the Family, But at What Cost?

Jerome and I, shortly after his birth on November 27, 1982.

I had been sixteen for thirty-six days when my son Jerome was born.

There we are: a young mother holding her newborn son. That photograph captures a moment in our lives. It cannot tell you what sort of future I imagined, what I knew, or what I might become. But plenty of people seemed prepared to decide those things for me.

Apparently, having a baby at sixteen was enough for society to decide that my education was no longer particularly important.

Now, I don't remember anybody suggesting that the young man responsible for the other half of that pregnancy should have his future rearranged. Perhaps there was a meeting I wasn't invited to. But somehow, becoming a mother meant I had committed an offence for which education could be withheld as punishment.

We didn't call it that, of course.

We called it consequences. Responsibility. Growing up too fast. You made your bed, now lie in it.

Funny how frequently society confuses punishment with responsibility, particularly when the person being punished is a young woman.

I call it social punishment.

And what an interesting arrangement it is. We tell teenage mothers they've ruined their futures, make it harder for them to obtain an education, and then spend the next several decades complaining about women who require public assistance.

One might almost think the system was designed to produce the very circumstances it condemns.

But I digress.

Or perhaps I don't.

Because this is where my educational story begins.

First in the family

In 2008, at forty-one, I entered the University of Toronto through its Transitional Year Programme.

There is something about that programme's history that deserves attention.

It grew out of Black community educational initiatives established in Toronto in 1969 and 1970. In other words, the door I walked through had been pushed open by people who understood that universities did not always welcome the people whose taxes, labour and communities helped sustain them.

I wasn't entering university because somebody had suddenly discovered that mature Black women were capable of thinking.

I was entering through a pathway created because people before me had challenged the idea that education should remain the privilege of a select few.

That distinction matters.

I earned my honours bachelor's degree in 2017, my Master of Education in 2019, and entered the PhD programme in Social Justice Education at OISE in 2020.

Not bad for a girl whose future had supposedly been settled by a pregnancy at sixteen.

But here's where the story becomes interesting.

Universities love firsts.

First discoveries. First graduates. First Black this. First woman that. First-generation students. First to overcome some extraordinary barrier that, if we're paying attention, probably should not have been there in the first place.

They even have photographs for these occasions.

And I understand why.

A first represents achievement. It can also represent the determination of communities that fought for opportunities institutions had previously denied.

But there's a question that doesn't appear quite as often in the celebratory literature.

What happens after the first gets inside?

More specifically, what happens when she learns enough to recognize the machinery that once kept her outside?

Be careful what you teach people

I went to university to learn.

And learn I did.

I studied equity, gender, Indigenous studies, social justice, systems of oppression, institutional power, and the very respectable language institutions use to explain why things are the way they are.

I learned about colonialism. Racism. Dispossession. The production of knowledge. Whose experiences are considered legitimate, whose histories are preserved, and whose accounts are dismissed as subjective.

All fascinating subjects.

Particularly when you begin recognizing the theories in the institution teaching them.

By the time I reached doctoral studies, I was a Black woman, a mother, a grandmother and a mature student with several decades of lived experience.

I didn't arrive empty-handed, waiting for somebody to fill my head with knowledge.

I brought knowledge with me.

Some of it had been acquired in classrooms. Much of it had been acquired in places where there were no professors, no course outlines, and certainly no extensions when life became difficult.

My comprehensive examination research was titled:

Smart Ass or Smart Ask? Western Universities as a Gateway Institution for the Dispossession of Black Women.

Yes, that was really the title.

Because I had become interested in something rather peculiar.

Universities encourage critical thinking. They tell students to question assumptions, challenge systems, examine power and consider whose interests are being served.

Excellent advice.

But what happens when students begin asking those questions about the university itself?

Does critical thinking remain a celebrated intellectual activity?

Or does the student suddenly become difficult?

A smart-ass rather than someone making a smart ask?

I found the distinction worth investigating.

I still do.

Apparently, I passed

On September 24, 2025, I received confirmation from the University of Toronto that I had passed my doctoral comprehensive examinations.

By then, I had already communicated my intention to withdraw from the programme.

Read that again.

I passed.

Not almost passed. Not failed to meet the academic standard. Passed.

Yet I was leaving.

Now, conventional wisdom might suggest that the student who leaves a doctoral programme simply couldn't complete the work.

Perhaps she wasn't sufficiently dedicated. Perhaps the demands were too great. Perhaps she wasn't doctoral material.

Except that the university had already assessed my work and subsequently confirmed that I met its comprehensive examination requirements.

So perhaps the question isn't always why a student couldn't manage the university.

Perhaps sometimes we should ask what the university was unable or unwilling to manage for the student.

During my doctoral studies, I experienced bereavement, disability-related challenges, housing instability and circumstances that I believe the institution failed to address adequately.

I eventually lost the student housing my family and I had called home.

The university had departments for housing, academics, accessibility, finances and student support. Each had responsibilities, procedures and reasons why certain things could or could not be done.

Meanwhile, I had one life.

It would have been rather convenient if I could have divided myself into separate departments too.

Unfortunately, my body did not recognize the distinction between an academic deadline, a seizure, a housing crisis and the death of my son.

Neither did my family.

And no amount of administrative compartmentalization made those circumstances disappear.

But my research passed.

And it is still sitting there.

A body of intellectual work examining the dispossession of Black women within Western universities, developed by a Black woman who subsequently brought a human rights application against the university where she was studying.

You have to admit, there's a certain irony in that.

The problem with asking for accountability

In September 2025, I brought an application before the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario against the Governing Council of the University of Toronto.

My application raises allegations involving race, disability, age, family status and related grounds. I am seeking remedies for what I experienced, as well as institutional changes.

The Tribunal has not made a final determination on those allegations.

But there is something I want to discuss that goes beyond my individual complaint.

Students are encouraged to speak up.

Report discrimination. Report harassment. Report inappropriate conduct. Use the available procedures. Trust the system.

Sounds reasonable.

Until we consider who controls the system.

A student may depend on a supervisor for academic approval, funding, references, recommendations and opportunities that could determine the next twenty years of their professional life.

And we expect that student to challenge the same person or institution without worrying about the consequences?

Really?

It takes very little imagination to understand why some students remain silent.

It isn't necessarily because nothing happened.

It may be because something happened and they cannot afford for something else to happen.

I think about younger students when I consider what accountability means.

Not because I believe they are incapable of advocating for themselves. Quite the opposite.

But there is a difference between having the right to complain and having the security to exercise that right.

A policy can promise protection against retaliation. A student can still worry about who will write the next reference letter.

And universities know the difference.

At sixty, I am not immune to the consequences of speaking out.

I have already experienced losses that cannot be restored by an apology or a favourable decision.

But I also know something about silence.

I know what it costs when people with authority make decisions about your future, and nobody asks whether those decisions were fair.

I knew something about that at sixteen.

I know considerably more about it now.

First, period

Recently, I began wondering whether my human rights application might represent a historical first.

Not simply the first in my family to reach university, or to earn the degrees I earned.

Something else.

How many Black grandmothers approaching sixty have pursued doctoral studies, passed their comprehensive examinations, withdrawn amid allegations of institutional discrimination, and subsequently brought a multi-ground human rights application against the university?

I don't know.

That's why I'm asking.

I want to know who came before me. What they challenged. What happened to them. Whether their concerns were heard, dismissed, settled quietly, or simply never entered the public record.

I also wonder about the students whose names we will never find.

The students who left without filing complaints.

The students who calculated that challenging the university might cost more than enduring whatever had happened.

The students who were advised to be patient, professional, reasonable or grateful.

Especially grateful.

There's a word Black women have heard quite enough of.

Be grateful you were admitted.

Be grateful you received funding.

Be grateful someone agreed to supervise you.

Be grateful you were given an opportunity.

At what point does gratitude become an expectation that we surrender the right to ask questions?

And why should an institution's decision to admit a student be treated as a favour rather than the beginning of a relationship involving responsibilities on both sides?

I was grateful for the educational opportunities made possible by the people who fought before me.

I remain grateful for the professors, scholars and community members who supported my intellectual development.

But gratitude is not a gag order.

And a university education should not require one.

What exactly are we celebrating?

I have been thinking about the history of firsts.

When the University of Toronto celebrates a first-generation student, what is it celebrating?

The student's achievement?

The institution's commitment to access?

The community struggles that made admission possible?

Or perhaps some combination of all three.

Those are worthwhile questions.

But there's another one.

What responsibility does the university have to the first-generation student after the photographs have been taken?

After the award ceremony?

After the student encounters circumstances that cannot be resolved with a congratulatory message about resilience?

Because resilience, I've noticed, is another word institutions enjoy using.

It sounds much better than explaining why someone had to endure so much in the first place.

My education was not a gift bestowed upon a deserving woman who overcame adversity.

It was something I worked for, fought for and reclaimed after society had decided that becoming a mother at sixteen should narrow my possibilities.

I did not return to school to become an inspirational example of what a teenage mother can accomplish.

I returned because I had questions. Because I wanted to learn. Because I had intellectual ambitions that did not disappear when I gave birth.

And because I rejected the idea that one decision made at sixteen should determine the boundaries of my life.

Now, decades later, I find myself asking another set of questions.

This time, they're directed at the institution that educated me.

I don't yet know whether my HRTO application is a historical first.

Perhaps the research will reveal others. I hope it does. Their experiences deserve attention too.

But I do know that the education I reclaimed has given me the language, the scholarship and the confidence to ask questions I might once have been expected to keep to myself.

And there is something wonderfully inconvenient about that.

The university taught me to examine power.

I paid attention.

Now I'm examining theirs.