Episode 07: Luz Longsworth

Can forgiveness lead to philanthropy? Luz Longsworth, MA'82, shares the story of how she was inspired to mobilize alumni from across the Caribbean to help Queen's grow into a more diverse, welcoming community.

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Cause & Effect, Episode 7, Luz Longsworth, MA’82

Host:  I want to talk for a minute about forgiveness. It’s a tough topic, isn’t it?  We all make mistakes. We all hurt people, whether knowingly or out of ignorance. And we want to be forgiven. But when the shoe is on the other foot, when someone hurts us – deliberately or otherwise – that’s when we realize that forgiveness is hard work. Gandhi said, “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

But I think my favourite insight comes from bell hooks. She said, “For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked. How do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”

That’s the balancing act, right? We can’t let the people who have hurt us off the hook, but at the same time, we want to believe that we can help them change for the better.

I’m Deborah Melman-Clement, and this is Cause and Effect, a Queen’s Alumni Review podcast, where we dive into the motivations of philanthropists and explore what they’re passionate about and the impact they have on the world. 

OK, so what does forgiveness have to do with philanthropy? Well, if you’re someone really strong, like Luz Longsworth, your philanthropy becomes a part of your forgiveness – a way to help hold someone accountable and give yourself a stake in their transformation.

Luz came to Queen’s from Kingston, Jamaica, in the early 1980s to earn a master’s degree in Hispanic Studies.

It might seem like an unlikely journey – from Kingston, Jamaica to Kingston, Ontario – but she had been studying at the University of the West Indies, and several of her professors there had been to Queen’s. Several of her friends too.

Luz: The other thing was that Queen’s gave us a tremendous scholarship opportunity which allowed for someone who normally would not have been able to afford studying abroad, like myself coming straight out of First Degree, to come to Canada to have tuition fully covered and also the department gave me a teaching fellowship which allowed me to cover my living expenses.

My mom, as a single mom, as an entrepreneur who was running her own business, was not going to be able to do any support of me without the support of the Queen’s scholarship. I am so grateful to Queen’s for that opportunity to study abroad. I don’t know what my life would have been like without that opportunity.

Host: Of course, Kingston, Ontario is a little different from Kingston, Jamaica. There’s snow, for one thing.

Luz:  Because I remember the first snowfall. There were two other Jamaican students, one in English and one in Economics, and myself, and we were having dinner together when the first snowfall came and we ran outside and we kept going “snow, snow, snow!!!”

Host: But not all of the differences were that charming. Not long after she arrived, Luz had an experience that she hadn’t prepared herself for.

Luz:  A friend of mine and myself, we had decided we were going to room together, and we were looking for a place together. And we discovered some very overt and some not-so-overt racist approaches to us. Places would be available, we would call. It was just down the road. They’d say yes, it’s available, you’re Queen’s graduate students, definitely come. And we’d go knock on the door, the person would answer, and they would literally slam the door in our face.

We had incidents of racial slurs being thrown at us as we walked downtown Kingston in particular. Strangely a lot from young people, which was particularly upsetting because you’d think that young people, young men in particular as Black women. There would be racial and sexual slurs.

Host:  Fortunately, Luz also had a lot of positive experiences that year, and they helped take some of the sting out of those negative experiences. 

Luz:   We did have the African-Caribbean Student Society and we had parties, and we had an Afro-Caribbean dance company which I was a member of, so there were things that did validate and reinforce the culture, and there were attempts even then. One must always focus on what is the positive that you get out of every negative in your life. The positive was clearly the growth experience. 

Host:  That growth experience included a world-class education that Luz is particularly proud of, and the confidence that can only come from adapting successfully to life in a new country. 

She continued having growth experiences after she left Queen’s. She got an MBA from the University of the West Indies and then a doctorate in Business Administration from the University of Bath. She spent most of her career as a senior administrator at UWI, including a stint as Principal and Pro-Vice Chancellor at their Open Campus, which serves 17 Caribbean countries.

Through it all, she remained in contact with Queen’s, keeping current through the Alumni Review and giving small annual gifts – a remarkable commitment, considering what she experienced here. But, as Luz says, that seems to be a common thread among certain alumni.

Luz:  What I find, surprisingly, is that older alum such as myself become very nostalgic and we are very willing to support even or maybe because of our experiences there. Being exposed to all of these things makes you a much more open person, so obviously it makes you want to ensure that others don’t have those experiences when they get there.

Host:  But it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that Luz was inspired to make a bigger impact. There were two watershed moments that pushed her into action. The first, not surprisingly, was COVID-19.

Luz:  I think with the pandemic and putting things online, like Homecoming and those things, have really enabled us who are not able to be in a metropolitan site where you have the chapters to look at Queen’s again.

Host:  The second watershed moment was a more personal moment. Her son decided to follow in her footsteps and come to Queen’s. But unfortunately, he was having a harder time making it work financially than she did.

Luz:  I actually realized how expensive it was when my own son applied to Queen’s to do a master’s program and I thought particularly because in Jamaica, the exchange rate is pretty, pretty low compared to the Canadian dollar, that it is a lot more prohibitive now for young Jamaican students to go to Queen’s from a standard background, without scholarship. And having been a recipient of that and a beneficiary of that, I thought it was time perhaps that we did something ourselves.

Host: While she wasn’t in a position to make a big gift herself, Luz had a plan, inspired by some homespun Caribbean wisdom.

Luz:  In Jamaica we have a saying that says, “every mickle make a muckle,” or “one, one coco full basket.” And what it means is that that’s our philosophy as Jamaicans and Caribbean people – that every little bit counts and helps to build a bigger and bigger pool.

As a university administrator and professor, you can imagine I don’t have millions of dollars, but I do have my own small donations and I do have a network of people from Queen’s and maybe even outside of alumni, but people who have businesses in Canada, who have friends and family in Canada who can help to build that basket.

Host:  The basket is actually a bursary – kind of like the one that helped Luz all those years ago – that will target Caribbean students looking to study in Canada and encourage them to come to Queen’s – something they’re not doing as much these days.

Luz:  Most of the students are going perhaps to U of T or Ryerson. Some of the community colleges are getting a lot of the students because of the lower fees. So I think what we want is that some of our best and brightest, if they are coming to Canada, that they consider coming to Queen’s because they have support there.

Host: To get the bursary off the ground, Luz has turned to alumni and friends from across the Caribbean. She teamed up with Queen’s Advancement staff to build an alumni community in the region – which will eventually become a new chapter of the Alumni Association. 

Luz:  We were able from LinkedIn to identify somewhere about 15 alumni who were on LinkedIn, but I noticed that there were several more who were not identifying as Queen’s alumni or who were not on LinkedIn who I knew. So, a guestimate, a good guestimate now is that we have at least 30.

Host: And the group is growing –in size for sure, but also in ambition. They’ve realized that they want their philanthropy to be just a starting point and they’re now envisioning new ways to contribute. 

Luz:  Also, we found that perhaps it was time that with a critical mass of alumni from across the region, over 100 alum, that the Caribbean should look at what its voice is like in the governance of Queen’s.

Clearly if we’re going to be investing our funds in Queen’s, we want to see how we can be more involved in especially the diversity initiatives to support students of colour and different ethnic backgrounds at Queen’s.

Host: Luz’s causes are EDII and access to education. They’re causes that have shaped her life and inspired her choices. And she believes in them enough that she’s willing to forgive what happened to her, see the good in it, and, as bell hooks said, hold Queen’s accountable for what she experienced, and believe in – and want to participate in – its capacity to transform.

Luz:  My philosophy has always been that you must make your world and everybody that you meet better for having touched you, and if I can help somebody go to Queen’s and experience a life-changing environment like I did, then that’s worth the effort. 

Host:  I want to wrap up with a little thank you to our executive producers, Karen Bertrand and Scott Anderson. I also want to thank my Advancement colleagues, Michelle Fuko, Sara Franca, Rachel Castellano, Nicole Lynch, Alex Beshara, Callum Linden, Danielle Van Den Brink, and Wendy Treverton. And, of course, I want to thank Luz Longsworth for so generously sharing her inspiring story with us.

If you have an inspiring philanthropy story that want to share, we definitely want to hear from you. Reach out to your relationship manager if you have one, or look for me on the Advancement staff directory at Queen’sU-dot-ca. 

I’m Deborah Melman-Clement, and this was Cause and Effect. If you want more, you can subscribe on Spotify, Apple, Google, or Amazon.