Dalhousie University has evicted numerous students from its residence after they were found to be involved in posting “inappropriate content” to Instagram.
Last October, a student at the university had seen a photo posted to the Instagram account “The Dal Jungle” that showed a bare-breasted female student engaging in oral sex, which she reported to the Chronicle Herald. The student also reported the Instagram account had posted other sexually explicit photos of Dalhousie students.
There was concern over whether the post had the student’s consent.
The account has since been deactivated.
The university released a statement saying the photo was brought to their attention in November 2014 and they launched an investigation immediately, calling the Instagram post “offensive and not acceptable.”
As a response, the university evicted a number of the students involved from its Howe Hall residence in late March.
“We recognize that this type of incident is not isolated to Dalhousie University,” the school said in a statement that addressed the Instagram incident. “It is part of complex societal issues in which we have fully engaged. We take our responsibility seriously to take action in addressing the harms that have been caused.”
Many students, as well as the Dalhousie Student Union, said this is not enough.
“The University’s course of action in response to these incidents of gender-based violence indicates . . . the Dalhousie senior administration is more concerned with the preservation of its reputation than with the safety and wellbeing of students,” the union said in a statement.
The union urged the school “to stop treating gender-based violence as a communications crisis, but rather as a social crisis that requires honest engagement with the community.”
Others are saying it is not quite as big an issue as people are making it out to be.
A first-year Dalhousie student who lives in Howe Hall, who asked to remain anonymous, said she doesn’t think this case reflects the university as a whole. She said most of the people she has talked to think the story “got blown out of proportion.”
“Obviously it’s not acceptable to post pictures of this nature on social media,” she said. “People have been sharing inappropriate photos long before social media and we are not the only school where stuff like this happens.”
