The University of Calgary has allowed protest camps in the past. What made it different?

The context is different, but the photographs are similar: a collection of colorful tents clustered on the campus of the University of Calgary.

One image is from March 1999, when students formed an impromptu camp to protest a planned tuition hike.

The second image is a quarter of a century later, in May 2024, when Palestinian protesters erected tents in what students described as an attempt to pressure the university to review, disclose and sever financial ties with Israel.

The campers stayed in place for a few days in 1999 and dispersed after the university agreed to a planned tuition waiver. A similar encampment covered the better part of a week in 2003 to protest tuition hikes.

In 2024, the campers, on the other hand, were declared trespassing by university administrators on the day they arrived and ordered by the police that evening.

The rest were forcibly removed by armored officers using shields, batons and explosives. Five people were arrested.

The speed and scale of the response prompted an ASIRT investigation into police actions and raised questions about the university's decisions. Among them: Why is this camp treated differently than it was twenty years ago?

“I think the University of Calgary should have looked at historical precedents in this regard,” said university senate member Graham Sucha.

“There used to be camps on campus,” Sucha said. “They were politically motivated and political. The University of Calgary allowed them to be there. You can find their photos on their website.”

The University of Calgary itself did not make anyone available for interviews, but issued a written statement about the differences between then and now, noting the wooden pallets erected around last week's encampment and tensions over recent campus protests in other cities. cities where in some cases they had been for several weeks.

The U of C said in a statement: “The university cannot speak to the decision made at that time (in 1999 or 2003), but there are some significant differences – primarily the presence of temporary barriers and the risk of counter-protests.” “

He went on to say that the pro-Palestinian protest camp was disbanded based on sections of three university documents created after the anti-tuition camps:

The 2019 free speech document details the right of university members to assemble for demonstrations on campus, adding that the university may “reasonably regulate the time, place, and manner of expression so as not to disrupt the normal operation of the institution. “

Legal experts say constitutional rights “may have been violated.”

An open letter signed by more than a dozen US law professors criticized the actions of both the university and the police as potentially violating the protesters' constitutional rights.

“Students who set up temporary encampments for peaceful protest were immediately served with trespass notices after installation and without meaningful intervention, severely limiting their right to protest,” the professors wrote.

“Absent meaningful consent, discretionary trespass notices and the decision to call the police to enforce such notices are not reasonable and proportionate limitations on Charter rights.”

Professors voiced similar criticism of the actions taken against demonstrators at the University of Alberta.

“By executing trespass alerts based on fear of safety risks and potential operational concerns, the Calgary Police Service and the Edmonton Police Service may have violated the students' Charter Rights,” they wrote.

Compare and contrast

Matt Stambaugh attended protests in 1999 and 2003. He even helped organize the latter as the president of the student union at that time.

He recalls that the atmosphere surrounding these protests is radically different from last week.

“Especially in '99, there has never been such a tense or tense situation,” he said. “It was very quiet and very respectful.”

He said the 1999 incident was spontaneous, but the student union took “responsibility” for the gathering and liaised with university authorities and campus security to keep it safe, clean and contained.

In 2003, he said he supported direct student union involvement and open channels with the university.

While each of the camps lasted a few days, Stambaugh said both times had a clear end date: a board of governors meeting to raise tuition.

According to him, the content and context of protests are also relevant

“It's hard to compare the tuition fees protests to the protests in Israel and Palestine in different ways,” he said.

“This is not to excuse the actions of the University of Calgary … but it was a local concern. It was a concern about tuition fees versus very emotional geopolitical issues.”

Current student union perspective

The current students' union says it was not involved in organizing last week's protest, and president Ermiya Rezaei-Afsah admitted it was a major difference from its 1999 and 2003 tuition fee protests.

With that, he described the administration's decision to call the police and break up the protest as “a mistake that put the students in trouble.”

“I'm still in shock that it happened. I think the shock is catching up with me now,” she said.

“There was no need for the police in the camp on Thursday because it was peaceful all the time. The situation escalated only when people knew the police were coming. It was as if the administration called the police and put out the fire.”

The students' union also disputed the university's description of the protest as “escalating” with the arrival of counter-protesters, which ended with “pushing, projectiles being thrown at officers, and ultimately flashbangs and arrests”.

Calgary police said a small group of counter-protesters arrived near the end of the protest, but Chief Mark Neufeld also said the counter-protest “didn't play a role at all” in the police response.

Neufeld defended the police action, saying the protesters “had a good chance” of leaving the camp before officers used force to remove those who remained.

Rezai-Afsa believes that the violence used against the demonstrators will have a lasting effect on the campus.

“This has traumatized the University of Calgary as a community and broken trust between students and administration,” he said.

Stambaugh, for his part, said he was too removed from the specifics of the situation on campus to comment on anyone's actions, but said it was disappointing to witness what happened last week after the experience with the tent protests in 1999 and 2003.

“It makes me a little sad that we've gotten to a point where we have a group of students at University C that have to be forcibly evicted by the police,” he said.