The Martlet

KELOWNA (CUP) – A ruling out of the B.C. Supreme Court has supported one student union’s decision to revoke a campus pro-life group’s club status.

Legal cases instigated by a pro-life student group are expected to have cost the University of B.C.’s Students’ Union – Okanagan about $45,000 as they successfully defended their right to not support the club.

Though the Students’ Union does not have a pro-choice mandate, they have not supported Students For Life since 2006, because the group would not grant the union’s request that they not poster campaign material from the Genocide Awareness Project, which included graphic images of aborted fetuses.

“[Students] were repulsed and upset that they were forced to be subjected to such violent and unnecessary material,” said Carolyn Cody, the Students’ Union’s internal co-ordinator. “There were calls to immediately deregister the club because of the material used.”

At a special general meeting in 2006, a majority of UBC-O students voted to withhold the group’s club status and up to $800 in annual funding that comes with it.

Rather than ask students to overturn their decision democratically, the club complained to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, alleging their right to free speech was being violated. The tribunal refused to hear the case.

The next year, the group went back to the tribunal alleging the society was restricting their right to religious freedom. Again the case was thrown out.

Finally, in 2007, Students For Life brought the union to the B.C. Supreme Court to appeal the tribunal’s decision. By this time, the students who began the case had graduated.

“It does not appear to be the goal of the anti-choice movement to win a decision in court,” Cody wrote in an open letter about the case. “Instead their goal seems to be to sap the finances and morale of the [union] until there is no choice but to give in to their demands, and indeed we have seen this tactic succeed in similar cases.”

The union is student-funded and the ongoing court battles comes at the expence of all UBC-O students. Students For Life may still appeal the Supreme Court’s decision.

“It’s definitely hurting student life,” said Cody. “We have to cut back on other things to pay for lawyers.”

And the rulings, according to Cody, “just confirm what we already knew.”

Marlon Bartram, who started the Students For Life club when he was a student at UBC-O and is the current executive director of the Kelowna Right to Life Society, says while he hired the lawyers to bring the case to the tribunal, he did not support appealing the decision.

“I didn’t think we had a strong enough case and it would be too expensive to continue fighting,” he said.

“Another pro-life group in Kelowna offered the money, and that gave the lawyers a green light to appeal.”

Bartram does not wish to disclose the name of the funding group.

He says if a current UBC-O students wish to start a new pro-life group on campus they would be best to send a strong application to the union and get it ratified with a vote, which would likely require they agree not to use Genocide Awareness Project material.

“I think it would be compromising their freedom of expression, but it’s better to have a limited pro-life club than no pro-life club,” Bartram said.

Other cases have supported the rights of closed societies to choose how they spend their own money, though this was the first time a pro-life club challenged a student society.

Because it’s a precedent-setting case, Shamus Reid, the B.C. chairperson for the Canadian Federation of Students, says it will likely add weight to cases at other universities where their student unions are fighting pro-life groups.

“Student societies have the right to democratically direct their own affairs,” Reid said. “They need to be able to uphold what their membership asks for democratically.”

A number of student unions have denied club status to campus pro-life groups over the last couple of years, including those at Memorial University of Newfoundland and York University.

More recently, the student union at Capilano University overturned its decision to deny its pro-life group club status after the group launched a human rights complaint.

In May, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), which has long had a pro-choice mandate, passed a motion to support member societies that refuse to allow pro-life organizations access to their resources.

The CFS is also creating pro-choice organization kits with materials to support pro-choice, and researching the funding of pro-life clubs.