This formal beginning was rooted, however, in the earlier informal efforts of various campus groups to challenge barriers faced in the university by members of marginalized communities. Some of these informal initiatives clustered around academic programs engaged in critical teaching and research about systemic inequalities (e.g. Women’s Studies and Indigenous Studies), some were the result of student organizing, and some emerged from the educational and community-building work of the Sexual Harassment & Discrimination Office (SHADO, the precursor of what is now the Equity & Inclusion Office).  Key to PACBIC’s introduction in 2002 was the advocacy of the Committee Against Homophobia & Heterosexism (CAHH) – a group of LGB faculty, staff and students and allies that had formed in the late 1990s in response to homophobic incidents and graffiti on campus. CAHH focused initially on drawing attention to the invisibility and apprehensions of LGB members of the campus community and pressing for changes to enhance their inclusion. It became apparent, however, that what was lacking was a forum for linking the intersecting dynamics of exclusion and drawing together the diversity of campus communities concerned to address and change them. PACBIC was imagined as a way of addressing this gap: a university-wide committee open to students, staff and faculty that had an explicit and legitimated role in providing advice to the most senior level of the university, the President.

Especially in its early years, PACBIC members had to work hard to simply illuminate how the systemic barriers that characterize our wider society unfold inside the university. Demanding their recognition meant challenging taken-for-granted and seemingly neutral organizational practices that reproduce systemic inequities and silences. In the process of this work and over time, PACBIC enabled the development of important relationships and networks among those striving to foster just and inclusive practices at the University, offering a space for support, learning, and the generation of ideas for inclusive change.

With the developments spurred in 2011 by President Deane’s Forward with Integrity initiative and its continued emphasis on ‘building an inclusive community, promoting equity and fairness, and celebrating our rich diversity’ (Forward with Integrity: The Next Phase, 2015), McMaster’s commitment to inclusion and just practice was reinvigorated. For PACBIC, this has resulted in increased practical supports from the offices of the President, the Provost and Equity & Inclusion. It has also resulted in increased recognition of PACBIC’s contribution as a hub for exchange, debate and advice aimed at redressing within McMaster’s orbit the shifting systemic inequalities and discriminatory discourses playing out in contemporary society.