The College Fix

After five pro-life students at Carleton University were arrested  last week for refusing to relocate, the pro-life group maintains the university was practicing content-discrimination. The university says it was trying to balance students’ right to free speech with other students’ choice not to be offended. The arrests are the latest blows in the ongoing battle over free speech at Canadian universities.

Carrying posters with graphic images of aborted fetuses, the five students were stopped by Ottawa police and university officials at Carleton. After the students refused to move their demonstration to a university-sanctioned space, the students were arrested and charged with two counts of trespassing.

“The only reason we were being offered other space is because the university deemed our display too offensive to be shown in public,” said Ruth Lobo, one of the students arrested, and president of the Carleton Lifeline, a pro-life campus group.

Carleton Lifeline requested space on Tory Quad in May to exhibit the Genocide Awareness Project, which shows graphic pictures of aborted fetuses juxtaposed with images of genocides like that of Rwanda and the Holocaust. The university instead offered Porter Hall, an auditorium on campus, multiple times in writing to the group.

“If you ask any student on campus where Porter Hall is, barely anyone knows,” Lobo said.

Each of the students were fined $130 (with the exception of the Queens University student who was fined $230) on two counts of trespassing: Failure to leave the premises when asked, and attempting to proceed with a prohibited display.

Officials at Carleton, a public school in Ottawa, though, believe the space offered was an appropriate compromise, according media relations director James MacDonald.

The group was offered Porter Hall, according to MacDonald, to balance “the desire to allow the Lifeline group the opportunity to exercise their right to free speech with the desire to allow other members of the community to choose whether or not they want to see these images.”

The university told the group it could put a table in the University Centre Galleria for the purpose of leafleting and/or directing students and others to the exhibit.

“The approach we took is not uncommon when organizations deal with graphic or disturbing material,” MacDonald said. He added that the Genocide Awareness Project’s website warns viewers that its content is graphic.

“The website (offers visitors) a choice in whether or not they want to see it,” he said. “We tried to do the exact same thing.”

Lobo said that even though the university’s compromise seems acceptable on the surface, it was proffered only because some students might be offended by the display.

“The compromise is paternalistic and systemically discriminatory in that the university is deciding for its students what is or is not offensive and what students should value,” Lobo said.

“If someone doesn’t want to look at an advertisement or hear something on TV, you have the choice to change the channel,” she said. “In the same way, if someone is offended by a public display or ad, you have the choice to look away. Would the University have acted the same way if Lifeline was only showing images of the Holocaust and Rwanda?”

In a letter to MacDonald, the students’ lawyer Albertos Polizogopoulous noted that other student groups were recently allowed to host events on Tory Quad, including the SPROTT School of Business, the Carleton AIDS Awareness Society, the Carleton University Polish Club and The Goggles Project.

Carleton has dealt with free speech issues before concerning controversial materials used by student groups. Last year, university officials removed removed posters advertising for “Israel Apartheid Week.” The posters showed an Israeli helicopter firing a missile at a Palestinian child labeled “Gaza.”

The Genocide Awareness Project, however, has caused similar conflicts at other Canadian universities.

In May, at the University of Calgary, eight students were ruled guilty of non-academic misconduct after they attempted to display the Genocide Awareness Project by the school’s administration. The penalty ultimately was a formal written warning, but the students had faced possible expulsion from the school for the refusal to turn their posters around.

“The Canadian government showed once again that it does not respect freedom of speech, freedom of expression or the sanctity of human life,” said Kristan Hawkins, executive director of Students for Life of America, of the recent events at Carleton. “Pro-life students should have the right to speak out on their own campus, particularly when that campus is publicly funded.”

Lobo said the purpose of the Genocide Awareness Project is to challenge people and their beliefs.

“Simply because the right to abortion is being contested, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t talk about it,” she said. “The university should be encouraging its students to discuss difficult issues and decide for themselves where they stand.”

Gabby Speach is the editor-in-chief of the Irish Rover and a student at the University of Notre Dame. She is a member of the Student Free Press Association.

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