Following his arrest on Sept. 3, campus security escorted a community member off the Carleton University campus on Sept. 12 and issued an official trespassing notice during a pro-Palestinian demonstration.
Following the incident, Campus Safety Services banned the community member, Francis Blair, from Carleton University property after a series of altercations regarding pro-Palestinian messages.
The Sept. 12 ban is not Blair’s first encounter with Campus Safety. He was also arrested by Campus Safety on Sept. 3 during Carleton’s Club Expo, which was held in the Fieldhouse.
Blair, an organizer with the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), is connected to the Palestinian cause and attempts to mobilize students for a larger, unified campaign against the conflict in Gaza.
In an interview with the Charlatan, Blair said that although the Sept. 12 RCP demonstration happened at the same time as a student-planned day of action, the two weren’t inherently connected.
It is unclear how many members or Carleton students were part of the RCP demonstration.
“We had our demonstration planned but we did not know that there was a march that was going to be happening,” Blair said. “Once we found out the information on where it was happening, we marched over.”
Club Expo arrest
While distributing pamphlets promoting RCP’s campaign against the conflict in Gaza at various booths during Club Expo, Blair was stopped by campus security officers.
“After some clarification from the officer, they put me in handcuffs and took me to the vehicle,” Blair told the Charlatan. “I was brought over to [Pigiarvik] and … they sat me in a room.”
On the advice of duty counsel, Blair said he chose to exercise his right to remain silent, despite being given the “opportunity to talk.”
Blair added that Ottawa Police Service officers came in to identify if he was a student. He confirmed that he is not a Carleton student.
“All in all, I think this was about a two-hour ordeal,” he said.
Video footage obtained by the Charlatan show a campus security officer explaining to Blair that he was “under arrest for mischief” on Sept. 3.
The video also shows a different officer explaining to RCP protesters at the Club Expo that they are not allowed to distribute strike pamphlets, which the officer described as “propaganda.”
Pamphlets obtained by the Charlatan show the RCP was organizing a national student strike for Palestine and outlined ambitions to “shutdown the campuses.”
In a Sept. 16 email to the Charlatan, Steven Reid, Carleton’s media relations officer, said the Sept. 3 arrest was made “due to a series of on-campus incidents that involved the person-in-question and not related to activities that occurred outside the Expo.”
According to the ban notice Blair received upon returning to campus on Sept. 12, these incidents occurred between Sept. 17, 2023 and Sept. 3, 2024 — the day of Club Expo.
Ban from campus
Around a week after his initial arrest on Sept. 3, Blair and the RCP organized a demonstration outside Pigiarvik to protest his arrest and continue showing their solidarity with the Palestinian cause. On Sept. 12, protesters gathered wearing keffiyehs and holding up signs with slogans such as “Books Not Bombs.”
Soon after Blair arrived, he was served a formal ban notice from Campus Security that had been issued on Sept. 9. However, Blair said it was the first time he had seen the notice, stating the document was only sent out in the mail on Sept. 11.
“What was happening [on Sept. 12] was a demonstration to protest campus security cracking down on the organizers for the campaign,” Blair said. “[We] were not promoting violence or doing anything that would threaten campus safety.”
The Charlatan obtained a copy of Blair’s formal Sept. 12 ban notice, which states he was in violation of the Trespass to Property Act of Ontario and was banned from campus indefinitely. A trespass notice given to Blair on Sept. 3 indicates he was first issued a three-day trespass warning.
RCP member and Carleton alumnus Gustavo Frederico said there were two purposes for the RCP’s presence on campus on Sept. 12: to protest Blair’s arrest and subsequently to join the student day of action for Palestine.
“We were there to protest the attempts of Carleton University to suppress our freedom of expression,” Frederico said.
When Blair was served with the ban notice, Frederico said he recalled several Ottawa Police and Campus Security vehicles parked along University Drive. Despite the altercation, Frederico and other protesters marched across campus to join the students’ day of action in the academic quad.
“We [chanted], we made signs, we went ahead with the march,” Frederico said. “We joined the other supporters who were condemning the complicity of the university.”
In a statement to the Charlatan, Ottawa Police said they were present at the demonstration to support Campus Safety in relation to Blair’s arrest and subsequent ban.
Despite his campus ban, Blair said he believes students across Canada deserve to know what their universities are inadvertently using their tuition fees for, referring to universities’ continued investment into companies tied to Israeli settlement activity on occupied Palestinian territory.
“If [students] knew how their money was being used, they would be very upset,” Blair said. “We’re not trying to do anything but fight it head-on and continue organizing.”
Featured Image by Murray Oliver/The Charlatan
