As LifeSiteNews.com reports, a group of students at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia are suing their school’s student association after it rejected their application to form an officially sanctioned pro-life club. LSN reports: “The student union has adopted an officially pro-abortion stance, an increasingly common occurrence on Canadian campuses. They claim recognizing a pro-life club would violate policy.”
Sadly, such stories are far from rare. In the December edition of The Interim, we cover the new report from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms: the 2012 Campus Freedom Index and its longer accompanying report, The State of Campus Free Speech in 2012. John Carpay and Michael Kennedy report on the larger issue of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of association on the university campus and its notable that almost all the examples are either violations of the rights of pro-lifers or restricting the debate on Middle East/Muslim/Jewish issues. As Kennedy states the JCCF’s press release, “These results confirm what many observers have long known: higher education in Canada has failed its duty of fostering free inquiry, critical reflection, honest debate, and the pursuit of truth.” Sometimes the abrogation of freedom is the result of administration policies and actions, sometimes it emanates from the petty dictatorial actions of student unions. Regardless, the freedom of speech of pro-lifers on Canadian university campuses is a perilous thing and its good that people like the Kwantlen pro-life students (aided by Carpay) are fighting back.
