It appears that "Gaza U" is turning into "Civil Liberties U."
The arrest of a Concordia Student Union vice-president Wednesday night is fueling outrage over freedom of speech on a campus where the rhetoric was once dominated by the Middle East conflict.
Yesterday, "Support Yves" signs covered walls and posts in a building where the posters used to read "Free Palestine."
Actually, Yves Engler - who said he was led out of the university in handcuffs for trespassing, interviewed by police in their car and then immediately released - didn't need much support.
No charges were filed against him, Engler said. He didn't even need the support of students who had planned to "escort" him to his midterm exam yesterday.
Engler, who violated a university moratorium on holding information tables in the Hall Building lobby and mezzanine, was supposed to be barred from campus for 24 hours.
But despite Concordia's policy of enforcing the moratorium, campus security didn't need to restore order outside Engler's ninth-floor classroom. The university had agreed to let him take his midterm on "the politics of the Middle East." And he wasn't even kicked out after the test.
"It's good to hear that they're not going to keep me from my exam, but that doesn't change what happened," Engler said.
On Wednesday he was handing out leaflets against free trade, while seated at a table in the mezzanine. He set up the table after Concordia's board of governors put off a vote on whether to repeal parts of the moratorium.
A university spokesman said Concordia's dean of students repeatedly asked Engler to move to a space on the fourth floor.
"Two security guards also told him to go," Evelyne Abitbol said.
Later that night, while Engler was sitting in the student union's office, he said police asked him to leave the building. He had been photocopying notes for his midterm at the time.
"I was nervous that they were going to take it and say I was distributing literature on the Middle East," he said, laughing.
Yesterday, however, Engler wasn't the only student feeling upset during his press conference. Upon hearing the noise, student Sean Zeligman left the café where he was studying to burst into Engler's press conference and complain about the politicization of Concordia.
"I'm an ordinary student trying to do my work in the other room and I hear this chaos," Zeligman said. "I know how important freedom of speech is, and I think we should have the table ... but as we've seen in the past it only leads to rioting and chaos."
alampert@thegazette.southam.ca
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