But saddled with $40k in legal fees due to dispute

    York graduate student Greg Bird was acquitted of a single charge of attempting to disarm a police officer during a major protest at York.
    The judgement, handed on June 28, dates from the Jan. 20, 2005 protest in Vari Hall. Police intervened in the heated situation.
    Bird, who pursues a PhD in sociology, was one of seven students who were arrested by the Toronto Police Service on various charges related to the protest. The other six students had their charges dropped in exchange for community service. Bird had two other charges against him dropped: obstruction of justice and assault on a police officer.
    The York administration, which had called police to campus to quell the protest, welcomed Bird's acquittal.
    "The university is content that no York student ended up with a criminal conviction," said Alex Bilyk, York's new media relations director.
    "It cost me around $40,000 to pay the legal fees. It would be nice if York tipped in and helped with that," Bird said. "Furthermore, York has never apologized for the student that was severely beaten up in the room that was set aside for the police officers. It was shocking for someone to see a student being beaten up by a police officer on their own campus for voicing their opinion on the state of international politics."
    The protest had been called by the Grassroots Anti-Imperialist Network (GRAIN) on the day of George Bush's presidential inauguration to highlight links between York University and multinational corporations involved in American military missions.
    Zac Smith, a member of GRAIN, thinks that the acquittal "seems to confirm (. . .) that the charges were strictly political, an attempt to deter those engaged in, or supportive of anti-imperialist organizing on campus."
    In the days after the protest happened, the university released notices claiming that "violent acts were initiated by the protesters against police," including "a policeman being hit in the head by a megaphone thrown by a protestor," and the firearms charge of which Bird was acquitted.
    Bird feels that "(York) clearly lied to the public when (it) stated that megaphones were thrown at protestors. What actually happened was that a piece of cardboard was thrown at one police officer in self-defence
(. . .) The admin knew this because it showed up in their own video tape.
    "I was extremely disappointed with the stance that the York administration initially took, where they were blaming students for the action," said Bird.
    Bilyk argues that the one thing that justified the arrests is that the "police obviously felt that the Criminal Code of Canada was violated."