The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) released its annual report on freedom of speech on campus, with the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) improving its rating from a B to an A.
According to the report, this shift was largely based on CUSA’s adoption of a new freedom of expression policy.
In April 2015, CUSA’s council passed a motion recognizing the importance of free speech. The “Support for Freedom of Expression Policy” was based on a template provided by the JCCF.
The 2015 Campus Freedom Index measures the state of free speech at 55 public Canadian universities.
The JCCF ranks both universities and student unions by awarding them a grade of A, B, C, D, or F.
They grade universities and student unions based on both their stated policies and their practices.
Since student unions are generally autonomous from and act independently from their respective universities, the JCCF judges them separately. Carleton as a university received a C grade overall.
From 2014 to 2015, CUSA’s grade jumped from a B to an A in terms of their practices. CUSA was also named in the report as being the best student union for free speech in the country.
“By having that policy on the books it really does give students a lot more of a legal defence when and if they’re encountering censorship,” said Michael Kennedy, co-author of the report and communications director at the JCCF.
“Free expression and academic freedom are founding and core pillars of the university experience,” Kennedy said. “The problem with trends that we see today like safe space, micro-aggressions, trigger warnings, all these things, is that they undermine that core pillar that a university is supposed to be fulfilling because in the real world we don’t have trigger warnings, we don’t have safe space, we don’t have micro-aggression protection.”
“In the real world people have to be prepared to deal with these things and to prepare themselves to be uncomfortable in the real world because if you’re not prepared to be uncomfortable, you’re not going to do well, and that’s just life,” he said.
Michael Bueckert, president of the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA), spoke out against both the report and the JCCF on Facebook after the report was released.
“It is embarrassing that CUSA is being praised by the JCCF, an organization that is opposed to efforts to make campuses safer spaces, and that every year puts out reports condemning Gay-Straight Alliances and human rights legislation,” Bueckert said in an email.
Bueckert also said CUSA “watered down its own anti-discrimination policies in 2012-13, making it harder to deny student union resources and funding to groups engaging in hate speech, and weakening protections for minority groups.”
However, CUSA president Fahd Alhattab said he believes these allegations are baseless.
“These allegations are nothing but . . . false opinions that people have,” Alhattab said, adding CUSA is a leader in safe space policies on campus.
“I think what’s important is that there is somebody asking the question ‘are universities allowing for freedom of ideas and freedom of expression,’” Alhattab said. “Does it affect CUSA in how we’re going to work moving forward? No.”
Alhattab also reaffirmed that CUSA is committed to providing safe spaces to students.
Bueckert said the GSA is committed to building safe and inclusive spaces on campus.
“The JCCF and the Campus Freedom Index have exactly the opposite goals,” Bueckert said. “I would be ashamed if the GSA was ever praised by the JCCF and their bullshit report.”
