Concordia Rector Frederick Lowy has officially lifted the campus-wide moratorium on public events concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We have traversed a painful period in our history. However, I hope we may be a stronger community for it with our commitment to peaceful dialogue reinforced, and a strengthened will to combat intolerance and hate,” read an announcement released Monday at 5 p.m.
The change had been in the works since last Wednesday, when in a closed meeting, Concordia’s Board of Governors (BoG) granted the rector permission to lift the moratorium.
There were conditions attached though: that the CSU, Hillel and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) adhere to the principles of freedom of speech and non-violence, and that the university appoint an independent advisor to monitor activities and make sure the principles were not broken. It is not yet known who this person would report to or when they will be hired.
Reactions from student groups varied greatly.
Both the CSU and SPHR lauded the decision, but said only half the battle had been won.
According to CSU VP Yves Engler, there is still the issue of the rector’s emergency powers of expulsion and the ban on student tabling in the Hall Building lobby. Although the board agreed to allow polling booths and tables for events in H-110 and the D.B. Clarke Theatre to be set up in the lobby, student tabling is still not allowed.
“What the administration wants to do is restrict [student groups’] access to the public,” said SPHR Secretary General Nour Eltivi. “Tabling in the lobby has to be brought back. This is student space.”
Both Eltivi and Engler questioned the need for a moratorium in the first place, saying there was little chance the type of violence that erupted on Sept. 9 would happen again. Eltivi went on to stress that SPHR has always been committed to non-violent actions.
But Hillel Co-President Noah Joseph disagreed. “We’re still in a situation where [Jewish] students still feel uncomfortable to come to school,” he said, and added that people are still afraid, and that there still remains a threat of violence on campus.
Joseph also expressed concern that the moratorium “punished the victims more than the perpetrators.”
“The university failed to apply the moratorium to SPHR,” he said in reference to the group tabling in the Mezzanine before the moratorium was lifted. “We went along with [the administration]. We believe in the rule of law; that’s what Hillel, Jews and Israel stand for,” he said.
The one area where all three groups agree is questioning the motives of the administration for lifting the ban. All three felt that the BoG acted more out of pressure from outside interests in order to save the university’s reputation than out of consideration for students.
According to Engler, this appears to be a new pattern in the way the university makes decisions. He pointed out that first, the university bowed to public pressure to act quickly by imposing the moratorium along with other restrictions on Sept. 18. Then, he said, the BoG ignored student protests over the new regulations, acting once again only when public criticism became too much to bear.
The moratorium had been making international headlines for five days before the last BoG meeting, after university officials obtained a court injunction to prevent NDP MPs Svend Robinson and Libby Davies, along with activist-professor Judy Rebick, from speaking at the university.
The fact the administration had gone to such lengths to enforce the moratorium not even a week earlier led to great surprise when the ban was lifted.
According to Rector Lowy though, there was no contradiction in the decision.
“The administration’s job is to uphold the decisions of the Board of Governors, and that is what we did,” he said.
It was unclear at first whether the moratorium would officially be discussed at the BoG meeting at all. Originally, board members had said the earliest date of revision would be Dec. 15.
But members said they felt that tensions had cooled considerably and that the time was right to return to normal activities on campus.
In his announcement, the rector also upheld Concordia’s political and cultural diversity as an asset. In that light, he has asked students to submit ideas on how the university can “facilitate not only tolerance but also civility and understanding between people who disagree with respect to values and political positions.”
Ideas can be submitted by fax at 848-4546 or E-mail at [email protected]
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