Credit: UBC Staff for Palestine
For the attention of President Dr. Benoit-Antoine Bacon, Dr. Arig al Shaibah, Christine Saunders, Matthew Ramsey, the UBC Board of Governors, and The Ubyssey,
A member of the Israeli Occupation Forces who loaded tanks in Gaza in December 2023[1] is competing in this year’s Invictus Games. Will the next news report expose war criminals swimming at UBC’s Aquatic Centre? The UBC brand covered in blood. Its values vaporized. Upholding the Rome Statute would see these war criminals arrested immediately. Instead, the RCMP is employed to protect their safe passage on campus.
Your students, staff, faculty, alumni, and community members have rebuked your decision to host war criminals. Why aren’t you listening?
The UBC community is disgusted and appalled by your blatant disrespect and total disregard for our safety and values - the same community you are supposed to serve. Guns, guns, and more guns are not what we want on our campus. Please, do better. The best time to start doing better was yesterday. The next best time is today.
On February 3, President Bacon, Vice President Al Shaibah, and Christine Saunders each received 1,157 physical copies of a petition asking you to “Keep the Israeli Occupation Forces Off UBC Campus.”[2] The number of students, alumni, staff, faculty, and community members who have signed this petition is now 1,672. 160 people have also emailed you to express their disappointment in your dismissal and lack of action in response to the urgent and serious concerns raised.
You have provided an abysmal response
The full statement provided to The Ubyssey reads: “UBC provides rented venue space to hundreds of external events annually across campus. Given this is an external event, the university has no further comments on the specific concerns raised by the petitioners.”[3] No person with an education from UBC should accept this as an adequate response. This event is internal to our physical campus. Your lack of comment does not demonstrate “neutrality”. It reveals your cowardice when the spotlight of history is shining brightly upon us all. The university made a choice to barricade a public community facility in exchange for blood money from an external organization that openly parades militaries, valorizes war criminals, and is sponsored by weapons manufacturers. This directly implicates UBC. We urge you to consider your obligations under international law.
As university leaders, you have a responsibility to provide a safe and appropriate learning and work environment for staff, students, and faculty, per UBC’s statement on respectful environments.[4] It is fully within UBC’s purview to refuse or cancel this rental, as outlined below.
As per UBC’s Space Rental Policy 2.1: "UBC reserves the right to ensure that any use of Bookable Space does not compromise UBC’s or the UBC community’s activities, as well as the safety and security of persons and facilities.”[5]
As per UBC’s Space Rental Policy 4.1.3: "Every unit responsible for administering the booking of Bookable Space shall establish rules for that space. Such rules must: obligate the person who is seeking to book the space to work with UBC to: mitigate any disruptions to UBC’s or the UBC community’s activities [that] are expected to arise as a result of the booking; and to ensure the safety and security of affected persons”[6]
You are not absolved of your responsibility when external parties are hosting events in UBC facilities.
You have put UBC students, staff, and faculty at risk. The Invictus Games being hosted on campus, and the likely participation of Israeli Occupation Forces (past or present), pose an extreme risk to physical and psychological safety. Members of our community have lost family members in Gaza and across Palestine to the indiscriminate, savage, and illegal violence and occupation perpetrated by the Israeli Occupation Forces. Members of our community have personally experienced violence themselves from Israeli Occupation Forces. Pause to imagine what you might feel if you were one of these community members coming face-to-face with a soldier from this same military while walking to your morning class? It is horrific and appalling that as individuals in UBC’s leadership, you have forgotten the very real, very human, and very traumatic experiences that you are inflicting on your students, staff, and faculty. Perhaps you don’t feel at all.
Community members have faced historic, systemic, and present-day violence from the RCMP. You would know this if you read your own reports like The President’s Task Force on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Final Report January 2022: 300 pages and countless more hours wasted under your leadership. As student-facing staff, we have heard directly from our students that they feel unsafe with uniformed military members and armed police officers roaming their campus. Yesterday, students were subject to police pat-downs at the entrance of the Aquatic Centre and asked for identification by armed RCMP officers. Students have told us as staff that they were subject to intentional police intimidation for accessing the Aquatic Centre yesterday, a space that was supposed to be open to them. If they have the option, some students are opting to avoid campus today due to concern about armed police and military officers. This hurts us as staff to hear that our employer is failing to take any meaningful action in an event that is jeopardizing the safety of students. We are ashamed to work for such an employer. We as a university are failing our students and colleagues.
At the very least, you could have warned our community about the planned events and increased police, security, and military surveillance on our campus. You could have proactively offered supports to students, staff, and faculty whose trauma, fear, or grief may be triggered by the personnel and activities on campus. You could have told our students why there would be police standing watch as they got off the bus while arriving to their classes today. Yet, you failed to take even this bare minimum action. Is this how little you care about the community you are paid to serve? Can you acknowledge that you made an error in not doing so? Show your humanity.
You owe your community a better response
We have been profoundly disappointed time and time again by UBC leadership’s “responses” to community demands. UBC leadership, led by President Bacon, has ignored the demands of a massive student uprising; ignored staff and faculty demands for divestment and boycotts; and ignored the safety, security, and wellbeing of its own faculty, students, and staff. Members of our community, across campus roles and departments, have been punished for speaking out about Palestine at UBC. The Palestine exception looms over campus. UBC leadership, YOU, have not even reached for the lowest-hanging fruit by condemning and demanding an end to genocide and scholasticide in Gaza. Shame on you.
The hosting of these games and your attempts to intimidate us with police force will not deter members of the UBC community from taking further actions to hold you accountable for your financial and political complicity in war crimes, occupation, and genocide. We care about this community, we care about this university. Our care will not come at the cost of complicity. The actions on campus will not stop until the university adheres to the will of its community and complies with international law.
UBC Staff for Palestine
February 14, 2024