Student protesters dragged from Career Fair and cuffed

For the second year in a row a group of Fanshawe students created a stir at the annual Career Fair when their peaceful protest against Canadian Forces recruitment officers being present was broken up by college security.

The protest, which involved approximately a dozen students lying prone on the gymnasium floor in front of the Forces booth, in torn shirts painted with red smudges to signify blood, took place shortly after noon on Wednesday, February 13.

“All we were doing was trying to bring awareness that the military is recruiting on campus,” said Jonathan Simone, one of the protesters who was dragged out of the gym by Fanshawe security. “They not only pulled me out, but they've also banned me from J-building, and when an educational institution and officials where I'm paying fees to attend treat the students that way it definitely solidifies my not wanting to return next year.”


The protest, which started quietly but quickly drew a crowd, was broken up when college security on hand at the Career Fair called for backup from the schools special constables. The protesting students were informed that they were calling for backup and asked to speak with a representative from the group. After asking the students several times to leave the gym, with no response from the prone protesters, the college promptly started approaching the individuals, requesting once again that they leave before dragging them out of the gym as no one seemed inclined to move.

As for the Forces themselves, they approached the matter casually, as they are used to this sort of event taking place on campuses across the country.

“It's all about freedom of choice and freedom of speech,” said Chief Petty Officer Second Class Peter Hale, who was on hand from Ottawa. “That's the greatest thing about the country we live in and Canadian society as a whole, that if they're not doing anything to hurt anyone, they're allowed to speak their minds.”

The protesters littered the floor surrounding the bodies with white crosses with the names of the 78 soldiers who have been killed to-date during Canada's involvement with Operation Athena in Afghanistan. The Forces, which have approximately 2,500 soldiers in Afghanistan at any point in time on six-month deployments, have recently been in the news as the federal government is in the midst of it's own war of words regarding the mission itself.

According to one of the Forces recruiters who witnessed the protest, it was only the use of the soldier's names that bothered them as those who had died had voluntarily applied for deployment and would resent being used as martyrs of any sort. But other than that, the protest hadn't been affecting them as students were still approaching the booth after stepping around the group on the floor.

“People wanted to speak out against recruiting on campus,” said David Heap, a UWO professor of French, linguistics and Spanish who was on hand during the protest. “They're just asking the difficult questions to make people ask them of themselves, and sometimes that makes things uncomfortable.

“And recruiting for war makes people uncomfortable.”

As for the college's reaction, Heap believes that the college over-reacted to the silent protest and made a calm situation into a problematic one. Security on hand was telling the gathered crowd to put away any cameras or camera-phones and threatened that any that were not turned off would be confiscated and would have their pictures deleted from the memory.

According to the college, if the students had gone through the correct channels they may have been granted room at the job fair.

“We know the same sort of incident happened a year ago so we had met with the Student Union following that,” said Emily Marcoccia, the college's manager of marketing and communication. “In fact it was the discussion at a college/student union meeting after last years event and we agreed with the student union on a protocol of how the college would handle that the student union executive agreed to.

“We were not trying to prevent the students from expressing themselves, but we had an agreed upon manner in which they were to do it, and they refused to do it that way.”

The college continued by saying that had the protest been in accord with the schools' Respectful College Community Policy and Safe College Campus Policy, which include fire and safety regulations, Fanshawe would have made a decision whether or not to accommodate the group.

“We do, in our protocol, have a criterion that allows the college to make a determination at any special event to keep two opposing groups apart,” Marcoccia continued. “But we would not put them side-by-side because it would not be respectful to either guest. We would provide them areas with the same access and ability to convey their message.

“So there would be a principle of equality to maintain that respect for each other, and that's the approach the college often takes in that case.”

“The college's reaction was over the top,” Heap continued. “These were just students asking questions. Security was saying things about it being a ‘safety' issue, but until they handcuffed and started dragging them all out of there, there were no safety issues.

“The responsibility has to go back to the college, because this is not the first or last time student's will be speaking out.”

One of the protesters, Peter Lebel, was fined by the college for his involvement in the protest under the schools' Trespass to Premises Violations act.

Last year a similar student-organized protest of the Armed Forces presence at Fanshawe's Career Fair led one to arrest. Fanshawe-student Darius Mirshahi was taken into police custody after security was called to the scene and charged with trespassing, which was later dropped.

London Police Services spokesperson, Amy Phillipo, said that the police had originally been called to the college but the request was withdrawn before they arrived on campus because Fanshawe's special constables had the situation under control. She also stressed that nobody had been taken into police custody or put in any holding cells, and that no charges had been laid by the LPS.