The Martlet

After more than three months of committee deliberation, the University of Victoria Student’s Society (UVSS) has passed a motion disciplining UVic’s anti-abortion club Youth Protecting Youth (YPY) for hosting the contentious “Choice Chain” demonstration in November. The demonstration featured club members standing in the quad holding large pictures of purportedly aborted fetuses with the word “choice?” overtop.

During a well-attended UVSS board meeting on Monday night that saw a heated debate over interpretation of the Society’s harassment policies, directors voted in favour of the complaints committee’s recommendations, which included a censure and a suspension of the club’s booking privileges for public spaces until Spring 2013.

“I’m disappointed with the decision,” says YPY Vice President Catherine Shenton. “As much as I recognize that people are very upset with our actions, I believe that freedom of speech is more important than feelings.”

Students for Reproductive Justice member Brittany Bernard is “pleased and relieved to see this motion passed.”

“The 90-plus students who complained deserve a response,” she says. “All UVic students have a right to a campus where they can move freely without being subjected to presentations that use guilt and shame to get the message across and demonstrate a complete disregard for the importance of acquiring an individual’s consent to participate.”

Director of Student Affairs Jenn Bowie, who chaired the complaints committee, made it clear that the decision was made as a result of policy violation, saying arguments surrounding the suppression of free speech did not excuse YPY from publicly harassing students with graphic images of abortion.

“When your freedom of speech violates the rights of others and you engage your freedom in a way that causes harassment on a non-consensual basis, then it’s no longer freedom of speech,” says Bowie. “To censure somebody is to publicly express disapproval of an action, and the committee feels that the actions [YPY] took during the Choice Chain event were actions of which we can’t in good conscious approve of.”

The motion, which passed with 15 votes in favour, two abstentions and one opposed, did not revoke YPY’s club status or funding. The group will continue to receive booking privileges for Clubs Days and its meetings, but has been ordered “not to repeat the violations and, in particular, not to organize or conduct ‘Choice’ Chain or similar events.”

The abstentions belonged to directors-at-large Charles Freund and Lucia Orser. Orser is a member of the club Students for Reproductive Justice (SRJ) who filed a complaint about “Choice” Chain. Director-at-Large Gabrielle Sutherland, who was formerly a member of YPY, submitted a letter of resignation from the club at the start of the board meeting and was the only director to oppose the motion.

Director-at-Large Hafeez Ali Dhalla originally abstained, but later moved to reconsider the vote and changed his vote to in favour.

Sutherland was vocally supportive of the club’s assertion that it was not guilty of harassment, calling the policy in question “out of order and in sad need of being redrafted.”

“It takes away burden of proof from the accuser and removes any presumption of innocence, particularly when you couple it with harassment being a feeling,” she says. “How do I defend myself if I’m accused of harassing somebody based on their feelings? I can’t because to do so would require my ability to read your mind and say you don’t feel a certain way.”

The motion included a specific violation of Section F 2.d of the UVSS Clubs Harassment policy, which identified YPY’s use of graphic images as “[c]ommunicating with another person or group of persons by verbal, electronic, telephonic, written or visual means in a manner that harasses.”

Before the Board voted on the motion, members of the gallery, which included the YPY executive and several representatives from other concerned groups including SRJ, were given the opportunity to speak to the issue.

Marie Clipperton, one of the students who filed a complaint against YPY after its “Choice” Chain event, said that any concessions the UVSS made to a group that violated harassment policy would send out signals indicating that the Board is willing to be bullied.

“No university or student society should grant permission to organizations to hold an event on campus that breaks their very own harassment policy,” said Clipperton. “[YPY] needs to be held accountable just like any other club or person would be.”

Bernard said she had to assist three distressed women during the “Choice” Chain demonstration who felt targeted and humiliated by YPY. Other women were unable to attend campus until the demonstration was over.

“The ‘Choice’ Chain demonstration was a tool used to discriminate against individuals based on family status,” said Bernard, adding that the positioning of YPY in the quad made it almost impossible for students to avoid viewing the images.

YPY Vice President Cameron Cote denied the allegations of discrimination, saying that the use of graphic signage was not an attempt to communicate a moral message, but rather an effort to encourage the consideration of alternative views — something he says is integral to the promotion of cultural and intellectual diversity on campus.

“How can a picture in and of itself harass someone? The pictures were simply pictures, they were simply facts, they don’t pass judgement on people and they say nothing about the morality of abortion,” he said.

Currently, YPY says they have no intention of defying the Board’s decision, though they plan on holding a meeting to re-evaluate and discuss their situation.

Bowie says that in the case of non-compliance with a UVSS mandate, further disciplinary action would be considered in another complaints committee.

COMPLAINTS COMMITTEE ROUND 2

A motion to draft a poster policy became heated during Monday night’s Board meeting as deliberation over a controversial poster used by YPY to advocate for “unborn rights” scheduled for fifteen minutes exploded into an hour-long debate.

The poster was the subject of a second complaints committee decision, which determined the club had violated several sections of the harassment policies for co-opting historic experiences of institutionalized racism and oppression.

In addition to another censure against YPY, the motion asked the club to write a letter of apology to the Students of Colour Collective, the Women’s Centre, the Native Students Union, Israel on Campus and the Jewish Students Association.

While some Board members were uncomfortable requesting an apology, others believed the poster overstepped its bounds by co-opting marginalized populations’ experiences of racism to further an anti-abortion agenda.

Maintaining that an apology would be insincere because they did not feel the poster was harassing, YPY asked the Board to re-evaluate the meaning of the poster.

At one point, a student in the gallery broke into tears, saying the Board should advocate on behalf of marginalized groups, not promote marginalization.

Another student, whose parents were refugees from Vietnam, said the poster co-opts his family’s suffering to promote its anti-abortion agenda.

Opponents to the motion held their ground against what they claimed was censorship. After several attempts by YPY to state that the poster did not violate the harassment policy, Director-at-Large Ariel Tseng amended the original motion to take away YPY’s postering privileges until a postering policy was developed, saying the club had clearly demonstrated it didn’t understand which parts of the poster were problematic.