University of Toronto rabble-rouser graduates in a gown of protest - but still faces criminal charges from a sit-in gone wrong

KATE HAMMER, The Globe and Mail
Compiled by Editorial Research

June 21, 2008

Her pale face bobbing in a black sea of robes, Oriel Varga nearly disappeared in the graduate procession. But as she moved toward the stage at the University of Toronto’s Convocation Hall this month, campus police had her in their sights.

A navy blue cape embroidered with white felt letters hung across her narrow shoulders: “I spent a night in jail for U of T’s crackdown on student dissent,” it read.

When she approached the stage to receive her master’s degree in education, a campus police officer blocked her way and asked her to leave. Ms. Varga refused, and a standoff began; the diminutive student activist in her navy cape versus the stalwart officer in his navy uniform.

But the student activist had not only brought her parents to her convocation, she also brought her lawyer, human-rights activist Selwyn Pieters, who intervened. Ms. Varga proceeded to the stage and received her degree.

It was an appropriate closing scene to her long and eventful career at the University of Toronto. She is among the 14 students, dubbed the U of T Fightfees 14, facing criminal charges after a March 20 sit-in at the university’s administrative buildings turned violent. But whether the students or the campus police perpetrated that violence remains a matter of debate, and although the students face criminal charges, the young university presidency of David Naylor is also on trial in the courts of student opinion.

A lot is at stake: Ms. Varga and her fellow students face charges of mischief, forcible confinement and forcible detainer that could land them in jail. Mr. Naylor, appointed three years ago to head one of the largest and most prestigious universities in North America, is accused by students of being an enemy of free speech.

“While dissent is inevitable and indeed part of the fabric of every university, this type of out-of-control protest that disrupts the work of the institution and sees staff barricaded in an office simply can’t be allowed to occur,” Mr. Naylor said in a telephone interview.

Standing outside Convocation Hall after the ceremony, a flash rainstorm made Ms. Varga’s hair hug her face like brown parentheses. She moved through the rain-soaked crowd timidly, side-stepping stragglers rather than pushing through them, weaving toward her parents, a diminutive pair of Hungarian immigrants who beamed with pride.

As students stopped to read her cape and congratulate her, Ms. Varga nodded and smiled, then continued toward mom and dad.

She has already spent a night in jail for rejecting the initial conditions of her bail, which barred her from campus and from communicating with her co-defendants, and she hopes not to spend another there.

“None of us expected anything like this,” she said.

Her delicate build and shy disposition make her well cast in the role of David, and she has battled an army of Goliaths. Throughout her undergraduate years, Ms. Varga regularly slept in a park to protest against homelessness. An enormous tableau she painted as a criticism of the university’s leadership hangs, after some controversy, on the top floor of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Her next standoff will be over the events of a grey Thursday before the Easter long weekend.

Student groups had organized a protest against residential-fee increases at the university’s New College and had occupied the university’s offices within the ivy-covered walls of Simcoe Hall.

According to university staff and other witnesses, protesters waved flags and signs advertising diverse causes, from the New College residence-fee rise, to the abolition of tuition fees, to Israeli apartheid, and demanded a meeting with Mr. Naylor, who wasn’t in his office that day.

By 5 p.m., campus police, concerned about safety as they moved through the protester-packed hallways, had asked most of the administrative staff to leave. Only six remained. Police attempts to clear the hallways as those staff prepared to leave caused the protest to escalate.

The next four minutes of this escalation are captured in a grainy video posted on YouTube. As protesters erupt into choruses of “shame!” the camera pans right and officers and students come into view, grabbing at one another in a way that could be described as neither friendly nor violent. A young man, seated on the floor, blocks a doorway and is lifted and tossed by a bald man who appears to be a campus police officer. The image bumps and shifts, and another young man in a torn white tank top emerges from beneath the feet of the crowd.

Unfortunately, rather than revealing what transpired, the video only indicates a tempest of activity just outside the camera’s frame. Students say they were pushed, dragged and trampled by police; university employees say that they were tripped by hysterical students who writhed on the floor and grabbed at their legs.

All agree that what unfolded was deplorably violent.

Mr. Pieters, Ms. Varga’s lawyer, advised her not to discuss the sit-in, but she characterized it as a peaceful attempt to gain Mr. Naylor’s ear.

“I’m very concerned with president Naylor’s direction and the student community understands that this is a crackdown on student rights,” she said.

However, observers not employed by the university have called the student-protesters’ behaviour “hysterical” and “belligerent,” and days after the sit-in, the New College Student Council rescinded its support of Always Question, one of the main groups that organized the protest.

Mr. Naylor said that he was saddened the criminal charges may lead to “potentially difficult outcomes” for the students, but that a strong reaction by the university was necessary.

“The bottom line is, this isn’t about free speech and dissent, it’s about what was a relatively disorganized protest that simply spiralled a little bit out of control and led to some bad decisions about how to advance a cause,” he said.

The university’s governing council approved the New College residence-fee increases a few days after the sit-in.

Ms. Varga and the rest of the U of T Fightfees 14 are scheduled to appear in court July 3.