Joint Letter with CUPE 1230 to President Meric Gertler on Suppression of Protest on Campus
To President Meric Gertler,
It is with profound and increasing concern that we, the Executive Committees of CUPE 3902 and CUPE 1230, write to you regarding recent escalations by the University of Toronto’s administration to suppress protest on campus. To cite your own 2016 public statement on freedom of expression, the University’s Statement of Institutional Purpose “makes clear, free speech can be uncomfortable.” Furthermore, according to the Statement of Institutional Purpose, free speech “is meaningless unless it entails the right to raise deeply disturbing questions and provocative challenges to the cherished beliefs of society at large and of the university itself”.
The User Guide to U of T Policies on Protest and Use of Campus Spaces, released in August 2024, is not merely a one-stop resource page for existing policies as the University administration has claimed publicly. Whether the policies outlined in the User Guide are old or new, the Guide serves as a warning of increased enforcement and criminalization of dissent. The User Guide has already prompted departmental heads and campus safety to attempt to enforce policies in ways that we have not previously seen. Here are some examples that our members have reported to us:
A student and worker at the University of Toronto, who was distributing informational flyers outside of an on-campus event, was told by a Special Constable with Campus Safety that “solicitation” is a banned practice and that nobody is allowed to distribute flyers on campus. (Handing out flyers is not even listed as a prohibited offense according to the User Guide.)
Workers have received warnings and threats of reprimand for putting up posters on the CUPE 3902 bulletin board in their department.
Students holding events at King’s College Circle were warned by Campus Safety that they are not allowed to gather there without booking the space in advance.
During the 2023-2024 academic year, when our two Locals were bargaining with the employer and we were preparing for potential labour actions, our stewards and members publicly distributed thousands of flyers and pamphlets regarding collective bargaining and striking, put up posters indoors and outdoors across campus, held rallies at King’s College Circle, outside of Robarts Library, and on the steps of Sidney Smith Hall without pre-approval, and engaged in letter-writing campaigns without issue. According to your new User Guide, these activities may now violate University policy and could result in “arrest, suspension, trespass from property, and expulsion.”
As you are well aware, five of the seven 3902 Units are bargaining this year with the employer. As we build worker power across the three campuses, we will continue to organize rallies and letter-writing campaigns, distribute informational flyers and pamphlets, put up campaign posters around campus, and, if necessary to win a fair collective agreement, engage in strike action that necessarily entails disrupting and interfering with business as usual. This is how just working and learning conditions are secured. As the current CUPW strike reminds us, disrupting business as usual is the reason that Canadians now have access to parental leave. This 1981 win is looked back on, rightly so, as historic and groundbreaking; at the time, however, powerful institutions like the government and the media establishment worked overtime to discredit and crush CUPW’s principled labour action.
If the User Guide is indeed intended to govern all protest activities across U of T’s properties, then we are prepared to defend our members against retaliatory and punitive action. However, we suspect that the Protest Guide is primarily aimed at stifling on-campus protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza and “rais[ing] deeply disturbing questions” about the University of Toronto’s complicity in Israeli apartheid and occupation.
As unions, we have and will remain resolute in our collective power for disruption, against intimidation, and all other regressive attempts to erode our fundamental rights to protest, dissent, and denounce types of censorship and complicity within campus.
The Executive Committees of CUPE 3902 and CUPE 1230
