The University Students’ Council (USC) is alerting students that they may want to avoid the University Community Centre (UCC) at Western University this International Women’s Day.
The USC sent a notice through its social media channels on Thursday noting that a pro-life group would be setting up a booth in the atrium.
“This is something that our executives decided this year to circulate information to service a warning to students who may have lived experiences to let them know that this booth is happening in this space,” said USC communications officer Mikaela Harrison.
“It’s based on feedback that we’ve heard in previous years, that they would like to know if this is happening. So we have taken that feedback and we’ve decided to prioritize student safety by allowing students who may have a lived experience to navigate appropriately through our campus.”
The majority of comments on the Facebook post expressed opposition to allowing the booth to be set up in the atrium, with many suggesting it was in especially poor taste to allow it on International Women’s Day. When asked why the booth was allowed to set up on Friday, Harrison noted that the group is registered with the USC, which is a non-partisan organization.
“We treat clubs as all quasi-autonomous student organizations, so we regulate them through our clubs policy co-ordinator and our clubs system, but we don’t intervene,” said Harrison.
“We mandate and treat all clubs equally and even if the executives, like myself, don’t agree with the views and opinions of certain clubs, it doesn’t allow us the ability to discriminate or intervene with their access to spaces.”
The booth was up from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday.
— with files from 980 CFPL’s Liny Lamberink.
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