The University of Calgary has allowed seven students to appeal charges of non-academic misconduct, filed four years ago after they set up a pro-life display on campus.
According to a press release from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, the decision was made by the Student Discipline Appeal Committee of the Board of Governors on June 17. It “is a response to the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench judgment in Wilson v. University of Calgary (rendered on April 1, 2014).”
The University of Calgary Campus Pro-Life club has typically set up two displays per year, each lasting two days, since 2006. In March 2008, the university demanded “that the students set up their display with the signs facing inwards, to hide the signs entirely from the view of people passing by,” according to the JCCF. They refused, and faced the signs outwards. Over the following two years, the university attempted to charge the students with trespassing, and successfully charged them with non-academic misconduct. The students began a court case in 2011 after the university Board of Governors affirmed the guilty verdict. Responding to Wilson, the Court stated that the Board’s actions lacked “justification, transparency and intelligibility.” The JCCF’s John Carpay stated that the Board of Governors, “had failed to balance the students’ free expression rights with other interests, and did not take into account ‘the nature and purpose of a university as a forum for the expression of differing views’.”
As of June 17, the students are allowed to appeal, and the charges of non-academic misconduct have been removed from the students’ files.
“We’re very excited. It’s very good news for us and it’s what we were hoping for,” said Alanna Gomez, a former University of Calgary student involved in the case who now works for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform. “It’s sad that it has taken four years, but we’re glad that the university has heard our appeal and dropped the charges.”
Gomez does not think it will change much for current pro-life students, however. “In recent years the university had changed their mind and let them do the display with no problem. They won’t have to worry about being charged with anything.”
