By Steve Weatherbe

YOUTH Protecting Youth (YPY), the controversial pro-life group at the University of Victoria (UVic), can’t win for losing. In fact, it can’t even give money away.

Two years into a dispute with the pro-choice UVic student society, it recently approached the university with the offer of a $300-bursary for a single mother/student. A university Senate committee has rejected the offer.

Commented Anastasia Pearse, the president of YPY: “It’s unacceptable that UVic should take a hands-off attitude to an organization offering bursaries because it is controversial. The university’s role is not to protect its students from controversy, but rather encourage dialogue and equal access to opportunities for both sides, and then allow students to make their own decisions.”

Robert Holmes, president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA), agreed. “Assuming the university is responding to pressure from those who disagree with YPY, it is not showing the kind of steely backbone I would like to see in an institution holding itself forth as courageous and committed to intellectual freedom.”

While the chair of the Senate Committee on Awards, Annalee Lepp, declined to speak with BCCN, university secretary Julia Eastman offered this explanation for decision. “I believe the rationale was that the committee did not want to create the perception of a formal association” with YPY.

When it was pointed out that the university accepts many bursaries from organizations with whom the university has no ‘formal association,’ Eastman added a second reason: “The committee has problems with the manner in which the group [YPY] expresses its views.”

So, famously, does the UVic student society board of directors, and the  Students for Choice group. Two years ago, they objected to YPY posters on display.

One showed pregnant women with the slogan ‘Choose life’; another showed children and elderly people, with the slogan, ‘We are not the enemy.’

Members of Students for Choice tore them down. The student society’s board of directors approved the action, then took away YPY’s club funding – ironically justifying this  on the grounds that the group was “intimidating.”

Each semester since, other clubs have voted for YPY funding and the student board has reversed the decisions, on various grounds: that YPY is deceiving women by presenting research about the health risks abortion poses; that it is racist for comparing abortion to the Holocaust; and that opposing abortion is tantamount to “making war” on all women. And perhaps worst of all, the group shows horrible pictures.

Last term, YPY brought in pro-life professional Stephanie Gray, executive director of the Calgary-based Centre for Bioethical Reform – considered an arch nemesis by some in the campus pro-abortion movement.

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In her debate with a pro-choice advocate, Gray showed a video of an abortion in progress that concluded with a close-up of the tiny, bloody hand of an aborted fetus.

Gray’s presence, and her graphic imagery, were then touted as more proof that the student society’s board should again withhold YPY’s funding. It did.

YPY has formally complained to the university about the society, with the support of the BCCLA.

According to Holmes, there is a case to be made that the university and the student society are both subject to action based on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and its protection for free speech.

“We are waiting to see how the internal actions of the university play out – and hoping that the student society will come to its senses.” But if it doesn’t, “the matter could well end up in court.”

As for the bursary, Holmes doubts it is a matter for the courts because there is no legal right “to throw money at a government institution like a university.”

According to David Foster, the student representative on the awards committee, YPY’s offer was initially approved. But chairperson Lepp then called for a review, at which the university president’s representative on the committee, Dr. Catherine Mateer, moved that the offer be rejected.

Eastman says the issue is not one of free speech or discussion, which the university encourages. She points to YPY’s use of a university building for the debate involving Gray.

Pearse said the refusal of YPY’s offer, when the group is in a dispute with those in favour of abortion, “makes it seem like they are taking an anti-YPY position – when they should be neutral. It’s unfortunate that a single mother will be denied this money, or easy access to it, because of this decision.”

YPY will still look for ways to get the money, which was donated, to a single mother.

February 2010