Alexandra Posadzki
CUP Ontario Bureau Chief
TORONTO (CUP) — Five students were arrested on trespassing charges at Carleton University Oct. 4 for attempting to set up a controversial pro-life display.
Four of the students arrested were Carleton students, while the fifth was from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
Among them was Ruth Lobo, a fourth-year human rights student and president of Carleton Lifeline, the Ottawa university’s pro-life club.
Lobo said the club had applied to use a large outdoor space to set up the Genocide Awareness Project, an exhibit that “compares abortion to other forms of genocide in a graphic visual way.”
Jason MacDonald, a spokesperson for the university, said other jurisdictions have deemed the content disturbing or offensive to some people because of its graphic nature.
“We need to balance the students’ right to express themselves on this particular issue and to do so freely with the fact that some people may not be comfortable seeing larger-than-life images of aborted fetuses as they walk through campus,” said MacDonald.
MacDonald said the university offered the students the opportunity to display their exhibit in an auditorium called Porter Hall, an area that Lobo calls isolated and “off the beaten path.”
The students were also permitted to set up a table in a high-traffic area on campus in order to hand out leaflets and direct interested students to the display.
But the students declined, stating that they will not express their views in a closed room, as the purpose of the exhibit is to dialogue with students and challenge their views on abortion.
In a YouTube video of the arrests filmed by Stephanie Gray, executive director of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, Lobo tells a university official, “We will proceed, because we are students on this campus and are being silenced because we are expressing a view that is unpopular.”
Lobo calls the university’s decision content-based discrimination. She believes this issue is about censorship and freedom of speech rather than just ideological beliefs.
“This censorship should concern everyone, regardless of one’s views on abortion,” said Lobo.
“It’s the equivalent of telling Martin Luther King that he can give his ‘I have a dream’ speech in his church basement and invite white people to come and see it if they want to,” she added.
“That’s not how freedom of speech works, and that’s not how we discuss things that are controversial, on a university campus especially.”
