By Graham Cook

SFU Lifeline and critics respond to the university’s decision

Following the University of Victoria’s recent decision to suspend the booking privileges of the university’s anti-abortion club, Youth Protecting Youth, for their “Choice Chain” demonstration, its SFU counterpart has reacted.

Mary Clare Turner of SFU Lifeline, who brought the controversial Genocide Awareness Project to Convocation Mall last semester, shared with The Peak that “even though the images they were using during ‘Choice Chain’ were upsetting, they are the truth” and she did not feel that people should be silenced or punished for telling the truth.  The GAP displayed similar imagery, which Turner said she felt were necessary to get the point across.  However, the University of Victoria Student Society’s director of student affairs, Jenn Bowie, told UVic’s student newspaper The Martlet, “When your freedom of speech violates the rights of others and you engage your freedom in a way that causes harassment on a non-consensual basis, then it’s no longer freedom of speech.”

The process by which a club gets permission to use such spaces at SFU as Convocation Mall is a fairly lengthy one.  First, a form must be submitted to the SFSS for approval. The society then forwards the application to university administration. In the case of SFU Lifeline, the administration met with the pro-life club in order to discuss changes to the proposed set-up plan. It was at this meeting that Turner said the group had their “permission revoked because the university administration thought that people could come upon the display inadvertently.” Despite this ruling, she added that “we did go ahead with it because if we had not we would have been accepting censorship . . . the university administration didn’t shut us down which we appreciate.”

The controversy, which has surrounded both displays, has largely come from the fact that the visually graphic images were virtually unavoidable at both campuses and could have potentially offended people who happened to be walking through the area. In a recent email to The Peak, CJSF radio host Brendan Prost stated, “The University of Victoria’s Student Society should be commended for protecting the integrity of their university and the psychological safety of their students,” adding that, “if anti-choice groups like YPY were legitimately interested in being a part of a serious dialogue about a serious issue, then there are easy ways to be involved that do not involve traumatizing and demonizing the people they disagree with. “

Whether or not a public university’s campus is the appropriate platform for demonstrations such as these is up for debate. However, it seems as though future displays will be met with severe scrutiny.