18 August 2024

As a group of faculty and employees concerned with individual and collective free expression and peaceful assembly in Canada, and with the safety and learning environment of students at Vancouver Island University (VIU), we write to express continuing support of the students at the Palestine Solidarity Encampment. These students have been exercising their rights to protest and raise public awareness of the ongoing genocide in Gaza for over one hundred days at the Encampment, and since October 2023 on the Nanaimo campus. On 24 July 2024, VIU’s Senior Management Team (SMT) applied for an injunction against the Palestine Solidarity Encampment. Both the materials submitted for this application and the court hearings have raised a number of alarms, and we wish to call attention to three of them: (1) SMT’s attempt to restrict civil liberties at VIU; (2) SMT’s decision to sacrifice Charter freedoms for property rights; and (3) SMT’s reckless expenditures in reaction to the Encampment.

We join the BC Civil Liberties Association in expressing our disappointment at the BC Supreme Court’s decision to grant an injunction. We are alarmed at VIU Senior Management’s attempt unjustifiably to restrict the civil liberties of everyone in the University community, as demonstrated in the excessive scope of the orders sought by Senior Management in their application for an injunction. SMT sought, among other orders, (1) an order to dispose of personal property anywhere on the Nanaimo campus (and not only at the Encampment); (2) an order to restrain anyone (and not only participants in the Encampment) from “using, entering, or gathering at the Campus without the consent or authorization of the University between the hours of 11 pm and 7 am”; and (3) an order requiring protest on the Nanaimo campus to conform to the University’s policies. These orders would have unjustifiably restricted the freedoms of the entire university community, and we are relieved that Justice Stephens found them overly broad and declined to grant them. But it remains concerning that the SMT sought such inappropriate powers from the Court.

As faculty and employees who believe in the work of decolonization and the work of Truth and Reconciliation, as well as the values enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we are also alarmed by the core legal argument made by the SMT. As VIU officially acknowledges as an institution, the Nanaimo campus is built on the land of the Snuneymuxw First Nation. In order for this acknowledgement to be more than merely performative, it must be accompanied by meaningful, concrete actions that are sensitive to the institution’s status as settler and not owner of the land. Moreover, among the four key considerations in VIU’s Strategic Plan 2021-2026 is: “Advance VIU’s Indigenous commitments.” Yet the SMT has argued, through its legal team, that the Nanaimo campus is unequivocally VIU’s private property. Furthermore, it has argued that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not apply to this private property. VIU, an educational institution that claims to be committed to the Indigenous communities of this region, has chosen to assert colonial property rights over the Charter freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly.

The BC Supreme Court may have decided the legal question, but the SMT’s position is not morally coherent. The legal defence for the students argued that the law must evolve to reflect Charter values, and we agree. Regardless of the current legal status of the applicability of the Charter to BC universities, there is an independent moral question: if any space in our society should be hospitable to the freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly, a university should be. In prosecuting our students for exercising these freedoms, and in resorting to the blunt colonial instrument of the Trespass Act, the SMT has made the wrong moral decision. Moreover, the SMT’s argument that the Charter does not apply to VIU should concern every member of our University community — students, employees, and faculty — especially when we (unlike many other universities) have no formal policy on academic freedom. Notwithstanding the legal question, the SMT’s argument sets a dangerous moral precedent.

On 5 June 2024, members of our committee organized the second in a series of open letters to Senior Management, ultimately signed by over 70 faculty and employees; that letter expressed deep concern over the disproportionate and expensive security and surveillance reaction to the Encampment, which we found especially objectionable during a deficit crisis.1 Among our demands, we made the following one: “Disclosure of all records covering (a) 23/24 and 24/25 budget and actuals for Campus Security, including any amendments related to additional security costs.” That letter has received no response. However, thanks to the steadfast resistance of the students at the Palestine Solidarity Encampment, Senior Management has been forced to make the relevant disclosure in the materials for its application for an injunction.

In the first affidavit (22 July 2024) of Emily Huner, VIU’s Chief Financial Officer and Vice-President, Administration, she estimates the money that Management will have spent on its reaction to the Encampment will total at least $870,000 (paragraph 18). Of this total, she estimates that $604,000 will have been spent on security services (paragraphs 20-22). We observe with dismay that this amount is roughly twice the estimated cost of VIU’s recently cut Music faculty (per the proceedings of the Board of Governors meeting of 23 May 2024). Ms Huner then claims that due to this spending, the University will have to:

“(a) curtail additional student activities;

(b) reduce services to students, staff, and the community; and

(c) consider additional layoffs in order to balance its budget.”

(paragraph 26)

We are wholly opposed to this reckless and unjustified spending, and we are wholly opposed to the SMT taking out its irresponsible financial decisions on students, staff, and the community through curtailing activities, reducing services, and laying off employees. As we argued in our second open letter, our students are peaceful and the securitization and surveillance of the Nanaimo campus is unwarranted. Moreover, in its legal case, the SMT offered no evidence of any “safety” issues that would justify this reaction. During our deficit crisis, the cost of this security and surveillance, and the additional cost of legally prosecuting our students, is unconscionable, especially when dialogue with our students would have cost the University nothing. We call upon VIUFA, CUPE, BCGEU, and VIUSU to hold Senior Management accountable for this reckless expenditure.

Finally, we are wholly opposed to SMT’s threat, in its “Update to the Community – Notice of Court Order” (15 August 2024), to enlist the RCMP to enforce the injunction. We have repeatedly called upon the SMT to commit to not using police force against our students. In its application for an injunction, the SMT sought an order for the RCMP to enforce the injunction, but Justice Stephens wisely declined to grant this order. It is thus illicit, as well as unwise, for the SMT to persist in its threats to call the RCMP.

We, employees and faculty, wish to be clear in stating that the SMT’s reaction to the Encampment is contrary to VIU’s institutional values, as well as freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly, and we call upon SMT to respect these values and freedoms.

We lament the loss of the Palestine Solidarity Encampment — VIU’s unofficial Advanced Research Centre for Global Justice and Civic Engagement — to our University. At the Encampment, our students established a truly diverse and vibrant community, and for over one hundred days, they have been assembling peacefully and freely sharing ideas and cultures. They have been doing the work of the University. The Encampment has been one form of our students’ advocacy for universal human rights and an end to the genocide in Gaza. While it is offensive and saddening that Senior Management has decided to demolish the physical structures on the patch of grass in the quad, our students’ movement for justice remains clear and resolute.

Sincerely,

VIU Faculty and Employees for Students for Palestine Committee

On the land of the Snuneymuxw First Nation

1 See the second open letter organized by members of our committee: “Open Letter from VIU Employees Regarding Increased Security Scope and Cost,” 5 June 2024, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Piiz-ohxAAsIIGVeNoxJpYWKY3RHoPf1-dBuVLQAbI8/edit#heading=h.jjqnutgzfy6e.