By Alex Rake (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: October 22, 2014
Last year, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) — a group whose mission is to “defend the constitutional freedoms of Canadians through litigation and education” — released its annual “Campus Freedom Index Report” for 2013, assigning UFV an F for its practices in terms of promoting free speech. JCCF recently released its 2014 report with no improvement to UFV’s grade.
According to the current report, UFV fails again this year due to a lack of progress.
“They have not provided any indication that they will depart from past practices” — that is, the practices JCCF deemed deserving of an F in 2013.
Explaining UFV’s grade, the report cites the university’s indefinite postponing last year of “an event organized by the campus club UFV Life Link due to security concerns arising from internet rumours about the possible presence of anonymous protesters.” UFV Life Link is an anti-abortion group run by students.
In addition to rumours of protest, UFV was given short notice that there was to be a speaker external to the university at the event. Jody Gordon, VP students at UFV, explained to The Cascade last year that “due to the short notice, [UFV] did not have enough time to do a fulsome risk assessment to ensure the safety and security of [its] campus community and external visitors.”
JCCF president John Carpay wrote last year in a letter to UFV that “if a university implements a policy of cancelling events the moment it learns that protesters might be present at an event, the university is no longer a safe space for the peaceful expression of a broad range of diverse opinions.” Carpay also suggested that UFV Life Link ought to “commence court proceedings against UFV.”
There is currently no word on whether UFV Life Link has taken, or plans to take, legal action against the university after last year’s controversy.
A conflict exists between the JCCF’s vision of campus freedom and UFV’s vision of campus safety. Both the failure to prevent disruptions through protests and cancelling an event due to fear of disruptions are infringements of free speech according to the report. UFV might have done the latter; however, the lack of time given to assess risks meant the university’s response was unlikely to succeed in either respect, if the protest rumours were credible.
The JCCF also assigned a D to SUS’s practices in both the 2013 and 2014 reports for its non-involvement in the issue.
