No Olive Branch for Amnesty International Concordia

Surprise Security Costs Prompt Petition

NewsHilary Sinclair — Published November 15, 2011

Two days before Amnesty International Concordia was set to hold an event at the DB Clark Theatre in the Hall Building, they were told that they would have to pay an extra $120 for security guards at the event.

Let My People Grow, the Nov. 6 “evening of art and activism” was a fundraiser for Project Hope, which aids Palestinian farmers in the village of Jayyous who have been separated from their olive farms by the controversial Israeli separation wall.

This wall is the issue, so with canvas, silver wire and wood, members recreated a small section of the wall to stand at the door of the theatre. They planned to have students dressed in military attire taking the tickets that were designed to look like the permits that farmers would receive, while playing the role of soldiers.

The purpose of the recreations was, “just to give the people entering the auditorium a little push in their chest,” said Andrea Portugal, Canadian coordinator of the long-term action group on Israel-Palestine from Amnesty International. “Actually make them feel a little bit what it must feel like to have a permit checked every time just to enter your own land.”

Portugal said that had they known of the security requirement when they requested use of the theatre, they might have budgeted for the cost in the beginning of their planning stages. It was not originally mentioned by the administration that security would be required.

The lack of notice has driven the club to draft a petition that is circulating around other clubs at Concordia to protest the article in Concordia’s Security Policy that “reserves the right to impose additional Security requirements as he or she deems necessary.” The clause also says that if requirements are not fulfilled then the event could be shut down.

AIC was not the first club to have experienced last minute security requests, which could make the petition popular.

Concordia Student Union VP Student Life & Sustainability Laura Glover also said, “Something that the CSU events committee is working on right now is a policy request from security. I think that it is really important that security develop a policy that is available to student groups before they organize an event, that basically outlines what would require security [and] how are they assessing risk.

“During orientation it was really unclear, even from a budget planning perspective as to how many agents would be required at what event and why,” Glover continued. “There just doesn’t seem to be any available documentation from security.”

This lack of information from the school changed the whole tone of the Amnesty event, said Portugal.

“[Not being able to have soldiers] detracted from the message,” she said. “Instead of military attire, [the students] decided to have shirts that said ‘I am not a soldier’ to highlight the fact that we weren’t allowed to have the military attire.

“In a way, it brought up another issue which is censorship in Concordia and censorship in Canada in general on the topic of Israel-Palestine.”

Concordia’s spokesperson Chris Mota said that anything deemed intimidating or frightening is not allowed on campus. She said she understands why having soldiers at this event was not allowed.

The university was unable to comment by print time on why it took so long for administration to inform AIC of the security requirements.