Carleton administration has officially implemented its free speech policy on the university campus as of Jan 1.
The policy was created in response to the Ontario provincial government’s free speech directive, which requires universities to implement a free speech policy or risk potential funding cuts.
The draft policy was open to feedback from students in October last year, and was approved by the Senate in its Nov. 30 meeting.
The final policy states that all faculty, students, and staff are free to criticize, contest and condemn any views expressed on campus. At the same time, faculty, students and staff may not prevent, obstruct or interfere with the freedom of others to express their views, and that freedom of speech includes accompanying responsibilities such as civility, respect, and tolerance.
Emily Grant, president of the Carleton Academic Student Government (CASG) and the undergraduate student representative on the Senate task force, said she was initially concerned about the policy’s potential limitations.
“There was some hesitation to make sure there are no specific restraints, and that the policy be as vague as possible because that allows for wiggle room,” she said.
“One area that I initially took issue with, but then did a little research into and realized wouldn’t be new with the policy, is that it indicates that the university has the right to remove funding for a student organization that doesn’t comply with the policy,” she said. “When I looked into it more, that already exists under Student Organization Accreditation Policy, so no matter what, the university has the ability to revoke accreditation for an organization if they’re violating any of the university policies, not just the free speech policy.”
According to the accreditation policy, the university will also not accredit any student organization that fails to comply with federal and provincial laws, which includes the provincially-mandated freedom of speech policy.
Grant said it’s important to understand that the free speech policy is no different from other university policies already in place.
“What I came to realize as we were going through the policy drafting process, is that nothing that we put in this policy is new,” she said.
“All of it was just taking bits and pieces from other policies at the university, and putting them together in a way that shows that we now have a general policy that protects free speech. But free speech is already protected on campus—it just wasn’t in one singular document that stated this,” she added.
David Oladejo, the Carleton University Students’ Association’s (CUSA) president, also present at the Nov. 30 Senate meeting, said the new policy ties many of the university’s existing policies together.
“It’s a starting point for dealing with any issues, and it just bounces off to the different policies that are already in existence within Carleton,” he said.
Oladejo said the biggest concern when developing the policy was the timeline.
“It was rather short, so for the Senate meetings that I was a part of, the debate was about wording and language because we wanted to meet the Jan. 1 deadline because of the funding,” he said.
“I think down the line, something that was raised in the Senate that we agreed on was that if we see need for review, there’s always an opportunity to do that through the Senate meetings,” he added.
Grant said it’s important to understand that the policy “isn’t going to do something new.”
“It’s not like university is now going to be a hawk, watching over all events and making sure that all of them include protections for free speech,” she said. “They didn’t do that before because they trust students to know what they’re doing and act in reasonable and respectful ways.”
“At this point, we’re not kids anymore. We’re all adults, and we’re all able to govern our own thoughts and actions. The only thing this policy did was meet the deadline—because the government asked us to,” she added.
Photo by Tim Austen
