Students to meet with UBC administration to cancel controversial event
Posted June 23, 2018 11:11 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A UBC student leading the charge to stop a controversial conservative political commentator from speaking on the university’s campus, says the school’s own rules aren’t good enough.
Reid Marcus, who is a fifth-year student, says the issue right now lies with UBC’s policy on discrimination and harassment, called Policy 3.
He feels it should restrict Ben Shapiro from speaking on campus. However, he adds, the policy only applies to faculty staff, not invited guests, or “temporary members.”
“There are no guidelines in any of the university documents for how temporary members are to be either reported, sanctioned, or investigated for breaking the same kinds of rules as anybody else on campus.”
Marcus says he and some other students have written a revision to the policy, which would change that, and they will present it to the school’s Board of Governors in September.
“We are going to try and build a case for having this policy adopted, which would essentially require anybody who’s invited to campus to formally recognize that they have to conduct themselves within accordance of the university’s guidelines.”
Shapiro’s Q&A session is being hosted by the UBC Free Speech Club at the Chan Center on Halloween.
He is known for his controversial comments on topics like Islam, gender identity, and the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
