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UBC sells its free speech soul for $50 million

Students prohibited from posting protest signs within view of Olympic hockey venue - UBC's new Thunderbird Winter Sports Centre.

Vancouver (20 July 2009) - How much is free speech worth?

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says it's guaranteed for everyone but the University of British Columbia (UBC) begs to differ.

UBC has sold its free speech soul – so to speak – for $50 million to the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic Games (VANOC), the price of the shiny new $50-million Thunderbird Winter Sports Centre that will host men's and women's hockey events when the games are held next February.

VANOC contributed $39 million of the funding while the remaining $11 million came from private donors.

Now, it has been learned that the money comes with some important strings attached.

Specifically, UBC has agreed to insert a clause in this year's student residency contract prohibiting students living within eyesight of the sports centre from displaying offensive "signage" in their windows while the games are being held.

Backlash

Stephen Owen, chief spokesman for UBC, says the policy is meant to shield the Olympics from "guerilla advertising." He will decide personally, in consultation with the UBC legal department, which signs are acceptable and which ones must be removed.

Since terms of the agreement between the university and VANOC became public, a chorus of protest has arisen from students, the media, critics and citizens in general – and it appears to be growing.

"I think it's absolutely deplorable," says 24-year-old Meena Sharma, a student activist who helped stage a UBC student Olympic conference last year.

Timothy Chu, a 20-year-old executive member of the UBC student union, wants the university to strike the signage clause from the residency contract.

Unfortunately, UBC has a long and checkered history of curtailing protest whenever doing so suited its purposes and so far there is no indication it will back down this time.

Owen says the consequences will be "serious" for any students who violate their residency contracts.

Memories of APEC

In 1997, UBC students were arrested for posting signs and demonstrators were pepper sprayed and strip searched by police during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

That led to a famous public inquiry which concluded, among other things that universities are the wrong places to be associated with events where "delegates are to be sequestered and protected from visible and audible signs of dissent."

Roughly 8,000 students live on campus at UBC during a regular school year. Due to a long waiting list, most students signed their 2009 residency contracts, which includes the signage ban, before Chu and the student union caught wind of it in June.

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