The Martlet

Christine Comrie claims that the UVSS board’s denial of funding to Youth Protecting Youth (YPY) is based on “arguments made by the board last fall.” I find this claim rather confusing. At both UVSS Board meetings last semester, Comrie (along with many other members of the board) stridently championed the prerogative of Clubs Council to make the final funding decision.

To quote Comrie: “[Clubs Council] should make the decision. Clubs Council is invested with making this decision because the money is allocated to them to determine who should be given funding. I think it’s totally within their jurisdiction for them to make these decisions; [especially] ... after the fact that we had already sent it back to them for decision” (board meeting, Nov. 3, 2008). Further, several board members said that to overturn the council’s decision would “delegitimize democracy.”

Has the board’s understanding of the council’s role changed, or does it merely fluctuate based on what members of the council want?

YPY does not deny that the board has the authority to overturn council decisions. It was upon the basis of such authority that YPY appealed the council’s decision last semester. However, it is curious (to say the least) that the board stubbornly refused to exercise its authority when to do so would mean funding in favour of YPY, yet suddenly reverses this policy when the exercise of authority coincides with the board’s own ideological aims.

Moreover, the board has denied YPY the opportunity to speak in its own defense. Neither Comrie nor any other member of the board informed YPY prior to the board meeting that its funding was at risk or was even going to be discussed. YPY learned about the decision only through questions from a Martlet reporter. In contrast, at YPY’s final appeal last fall, the board made a point of ensuring that the pro-choice club would be represented.

Perhaps our current board found it politically inconvenient to consider such inconsequential things as due process.

The board claims that it has not unjustly discriminated against YPY and that it is not attempting to restrict freedom of speech. It is true that the UVSS approved all of the YPY posters that were displayed. Consider, however, board director Edward Pullman’s public statement that YPY’s funding should depend directly on not using those same posters again.

Consider that these posters — the very ones the UVSS had approved — were suddenly found to promote “ambient violence” once an opportunity to deny YPY funding arose. Consider the board’s unannounced review and reversal of the council’s recent decision in favour of YPY.

There is every reason to believe that, in this matter, we are confronted by the actions of a group of people who have abused their office and authority in order to privilege viewpoints they find acceptable and restrict or suppress those that they dislike.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, a strongly pro-choice organization, recently cited UVic as “a fairly typical” example of how freedom of speech for pro-life groups has been unjustly restricted — “an outcome [that] represents the very antithesis of intellectual freedom.” The actions of groups such as the UVSS board raise the “considerable risk that raw political power will determine the scope of permissible campus speech.”

This, then, is the reputation of UVic. Courtesy of the UVSS board, we have been nationally recognized as a place that can be characterized as the very antithesis of intellectual freedom.

Good work, UVSS.