People self-identify in many contexts, and students of or applicants at UVic Law are asked to self-identify in certain circumstances. While self-identification can refer to many aspects of a person, typically, self-identification refers to things such as gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnic background, disability status, or Indigeneity.
For a variety of reasons, many of them quite personal, people have both positive and negative feelings about self-identification. It’s important to understand that, unless you are applying to UVic Law via an admission stream for which the basis is self-identification, UVic Law will never require that you self-identify. If you are reluctant to do so, there are generally not negative consequences of making that choice.
Self-identification is useful to UVic Law for several reasons and is requested in three circumstances. First, when you apply for UVic Law you will be asked to complete a diversity survey. While completing the survey is mandatory, every question has an option of “prefer not to answer.” The information gathered in the diversity survey remains anonymous and is accessed only by the Dean, Faculty of Law; the Associate Dean, Student Services; and the Manager, Admissions Office and is used for one purpose: it lets us know whether our EDI initiatives are working. Your answers in the survey are not used to evaluate your application, nor are they in any way linked to the merit of your admission. The results help UVic Law to evaluate the equity of our policies and procedures, measure the success of our diversity and inclusion initiatives, identify challenges that underrepresented groups face, and work to mitigate bias.
Secondly, when you apply for some scholarships, you may be asked to self-identify certain aspects about you. This is because the donors who created the scholarships have included certain terms in the scholarship fund. For example, the donor may wish the scholarship set up in their name go to a single parent from Nanaimo. To qualify for this scholarship, the student would need to self-identify both that they are a single parent and that they are from Nanaimo. Other scholarships are more broad and don’t contain such terms. Thus, while a student who chooses not to self-identify may not qualify for a scholarship with terms that require them to do so, they may qualify for other scholarships that do not.
Similarly, when you apply for a bursary, some funds have terms attached to them. Bursaries are needs-based and not merit-based, however, and choosing not to self-identify does not negatively affect your individual bursary application. If you have, for example, $2067 in calculated eligible need, you will receive $2067 in bursary funding, whether it comes from a fund that requires self-identification, or whether it comes from a general fund with no specific terms. Self-identification in this instance, simply makes more money available in our budget. That is, if there is a $5000 bursary that must be given to a single parent from Nanaimo, and no one self-identifies as a single parent from Nanaimo, our bursary budget is $5000 smaller. Thus, while self-identification may affect the percentage of global need of all students that we are able to meet with our budget, it will not affect your individual application.
Self-identification helps the Faculty of Law continue to facilitate dialogue at all levels around representation and inclusion goals, create programs that support a diverse student population, ensure that diverse perspectives and people are valued, and allocate resources to support candidates who fall into an underrepresented category. Although an individual student may feel uncomfortable disclosing something that feels so personal, it is an opportunity to affect cultural and social awareness. Self-identification can, in turn, impact the initiatives and investments related to representation and inclusion at UVic Law.