Further, the release said: “University representatives have been reported as stating that no students are allowed to set up displays in the [Tory] Quad, the area that the pro-life students selected for their signs.”
Carleton Lifeline president Ruth Lobo, one of the students arrested, maintained that the group had made a request for the Quad space several months ago, and that they had not been told the space was unavailable for booking.
Lobo stated: “The university is misleading the public by making it seem as though we are demanding special treatment instead of equal treatment, but that’s not true.”
Her colleague James Shaw, vice president of Carleton Lifeline, queried: “Why is the University now claiming the Quad is not bookable space?”
Further, he claimed: “We have done extensive research on the policies of the university and see no evidence of their claims that the space isn’t bookable. In fact, we see the opposite. If, as they’re now claiming, the Quad is not bookable, we should have been told in the summer when we were filling out the application form. That would have been a very simple answer to give, and a much easier one.”
The release quoted an August 9 letter from David Sterritt, head of the university’s Housing and Conference Services at Carleton, stating: “While we wish to provide your group with an opportunity to express itself freely on this matter, we are also aware that The Genocide Awareness Project uses promotional materials which are disturbing and offensive to some. To this end, we are prepared to offer your group the use of Porter Hall.” Porter Hall, the release declared, “is a closed room on campus that few students pass by.”
“It’s clear by their direct communication to us,” contended Lobo, “that this is content-based discrimination. This censorship should concern everyone, regardless of one’s views on abortion.”
“First the university has us arrested for peacefully exercising our academic freedom and free speech rights,” Shaw asserted, adding: “And now they’re coming up with excuses for their bad behaviour, that they never communicated to us. Shame on Carleton.”
Lobo said she finds it appalling the university would “mislead the public by making the arrest look like we violated university policy instead of what it really was: that Carleton censors opinions on campus — thereby violating their own policy of academic freedom.”
In response to the arrests, a debate was scheduled October 5 by uOttawa Students for Life. The theme was ‘Abortion: A Human Right or a Human Rights Violation?’ A page profiling the debate is on Facebook. You can watch the Carleton arrest below.
– additional reporting by David F. Dawes
– Courtesy of Canadian Catholic News. Please do not reprint without permission