Posters for a white students’ group were put up in and around three major universities in Toronto last week, before being taken down on Sept. 14.
The posters advertise a group called Students for Western Civilisation, made up of university students and alumni in the Toronto area, and show two young white men and the CN Tower in the background with the text “White Students Union.”
The York Federation of Students, among other campus groups in Toronto, condemned the posters in a media release, calling them “violent and racist.”
The Ryerson Students’ Union (RSU) also condemned the posters, and executive Cormac McGee said they were immediately taken down and submitted to the university security service.
“This was coming from a group that was off-campus and we were getting complaints from students on campus,” McGee said. “If they want to form off-campus that’s a different matter, but we choose our own student body over groups from outside.”
He said RSU’s main concern was to take down the posters, and there has been no attempt to contact the group or take action against them.
The group’s goals as described on their website include “to genuinely explore ethnic and cultural politics in a forum which does not exclude rightist or conservative perspectives” and “to organize for and advance the interests of Western peoples.”
Rajean Hoilett, chairperson for the Ontario branch of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS), said he and other students arriving on campuses to find the posters in the hallways were shocked.
“I know that a lot of racialized students on campus felt a little uncomfortable with the knowledge that there are these types of spaces and conversations happening that further marginalize them,” he said.
The group’s website contains a video interview the group conducted with Ricardo Duchesne, a sociology professor at the University of New Brunswick who is known for his academic work praising Western civilization, and criticizing Canadian multiculturalism and universities for a perceived anti-European bias.
“It would be great if they were taught to feel more positive about what, for example, the European settlers did in Canada,” Duchesne said.
“The incredible hardships they endured to create this nation . . . there was no electricity, there was no transportation, all of the things we take for granted they built from scratch.”
Duchesne said he was approached by a student who was considering forming a group, which would later become Students for Western Civilisation, and asked him to talk.
“From his experience he said he never heard positive views about the West,” Duchesne said. “It was always negative, about what was done to the Natives here, the slave trade, and how whites discriminate against other people.”
Duchesne said he didn’t agree with the choice of words on the posters put up by the group, saying he would prefer it be called a European or Euro-Canadian student union rather than white.
Hoilett said white students’ unions can be harmful, no matter what the intent.
“Conversations about a white students union on campus have the potential to really create some unsafe and intimidating spaces for racialized students who already face marginalization in and outside of the classrooms,” he said.
Hoilett said the CFS has ongoing campaigns to challenge racism on and off-campus and continues to work at creating safe spaces for racialized students, and added this is just one example of a much wider problem.
“I would go further to say racism is not just an issue on Toronto campuses,” he said. “In fact it’s an issue across Ontario and across the country, where students consistently don’t see themselves reflected in course curriculum or don’t see themselves reflected in the university administration and decision-making bodies.”
“It’s important that we’re talking about systemic forms of racism that students feel on a daily basis,” he said.
