Before Western Law
Before law school I had my own home, a career as an acrylic painter, and an active life of volunteering, creative work and community involvement. I founded Project Aaron in memory of my brother, offering memorial portraits to the loved ones of homicide victims. My art and that work received a Toronto Star feature on March 31, 2021. I had also sought mentorship through the Black Female Lawyers Network while studying criminology.
Fall 2021: a year of opportunity
In April 2021 I was offered admission to Western Law. I accepted and arrived in September excited to learn. I attended my Class of 2024 induction, followed the first-year curriculum, studied in the library and cafés, used course and office-hour resources, and built relationships within the student community.
I campaigned for and served as one of three elected first-year Student Legal Society representatives. In November, I participated as a panelist in a Lil Sistah's legal-career workshop with the Black Female Lawyers Network and Ontario Justice Education Network. This was a full-circle moment after seeking mentorship in that community as an undergraduate. Alongside law school, my creative work and commitment to volunteering continued.
When the unresolved issues began
I came to law school to build a stable future in a profession I had worked toward for years. In my account, what followed was not one isolated dispute. It became a sequence of overlapping academic, administrative, human-rights, and legal processes, each with its own language, timelines, and gatekeepers.
I kept engaging. I documented meetings, correspondence, decisions, and attempts to find a workable route forward. I sought internal help, used formal complaint processes, pursued external routes, and asked for solutions that would protect my health, safety, education, and professional future.
The direction has changed
I am no longer asking to return to Western Law to finish my degree. This project is now about telling my story, preserving the record, pursuing accountability, advocating for more humane systems, and reclaiming the freedom to build a future beyond the institution.
That change does not erase the earlier record. Requests for readmission, return planning, accommodations, and academic decisions remain part of the chronology because they explain what happened and why the project exists. They are historical context, not the campaign’s current objective.
What this project is—and is not
I am not asking the public to adjudicate every disputed fact, interpret every filing, or assume that every person involved acted with the same intent. Accountability and compassion can coexist. A university can have many procedures and still leave someone without a usable answer. A legal route can exist and still be too slow to prevent lasting harm.
Public communication is not a substitute for formal processes. It is a way to make a complicated record understandable, preserve important context, and invite constructive attention to questions of access, dignity, and institutional responsibility.
The consequences: what changed in my life
The record is being organized to show a before-and-after account of academic progress, student involvement, creative work, volunteering, professional opportunities, independence, finances and well-being. I will identify what happened, what I reported, how the institution responded, and which impacts I experienced. Where responsibility is contested, I will say so.
The photographs of studying, visiting the law library, sitting in cafés, showing up at orientation and engaging with legal networks matter. They are not decoration. They are contemporaneous glimpses of a life that was moving forward.
Moving forward
Moving forward means more than resolving a public argument. It means rebuilding a meaningful professional and creative future, using this experience to advocate for others, and refusing to let an institution have the final word on what my life can become.