Western University spent $1.6M to police pro-Palestinian campus encampment, docs show
The bulk of the money went to 2 private security companies
Western University spent more than $1.6 million on security during a two-month pro-Palestinian sit-in on campus last summer, documents obtained by CBC News show.
The cost, first reported by the student newspaper Western Gazette, drew the ire of protesters who say the university should not have spent the funds to monitor a peaceful encampment.
"It's very disappointing as a student, to see that's where our university's fiscal priorities are. To be surveilling students and putting almost $2 million toward security for a group of students expressing their discontent with Western and Western's involvement with different companies and industries," said Munya Haddara, vice-president of communications with Western's Muslim Student Association, which has been vocal about the protests on campus since last year.
The summer encampment, which lasted from May 1 to July 6, 2024, was one of many similar protests across the world. It was set up outside of the University Student Centre by the Western Divestment Coalition, and called for Western to stop investing in military contractors and other businesses linked to Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.
"There was constant surveillance. There were private investigation trucks set up around campus. People were being filmed constantly," Haddara said, adding that two campus strikes by teaching assistants and facilities workers garnered similar security tactics.
A document provided by Western University to CBC News breaks down the costs of the protests as follows:
- $1,659,788 for security, including $920,006 to Corporate Investigation Services and $709,406 to Alpha Security Services, as well as $20,017 for London police officers and $10,359 for additional university special constables.
- $38,874 to relocate scheduled events to other parts of campus.
- $37,887 for clean-up, including power washing, waste removal and $33,403 for 'lawn restoration.'
"You can't surveil students like this and restrict students like this and think it won't have an impact on student expression," Haddara said.
Western University said the expenses were unexpected but necessary to ensure safety on campus.
"Additional expenses included restoring the grounds that had been occupied by the encampment, including cleaning, removing abandoned lumber, structures and other refuse, and restoring sod and plantings," spokesperson Stephen Ledgely wrote in an email.
"During this time, Western hosted thousands of graduates and their families on our campus to celebrate convocation and some expenses normally incurred were increased as we were required to alter our usual plans."
'Over-policing?'
But universities are also public, civic spaces where intellectual exchange, dissent and protest must be allowed to happen, said Michael Lynk, an emeritus law professor at Western and former United Nations special reporteur for the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories.
"Was there over-policing? I was not at the camp all that often, but I was there on half a dozen occasions to see what was going on, and I was met with a polite group of people," he said. "It's possible the university treated this as a five-alarm fire when it was a peaceful protest, no damage that I was aware of, no violence."
The university could have negotiated with protesters over their requests, and had the encampment end sooner, Lynk added.
"If the university had engaged earlier and more substantively on these issues, the encampment may well have ended a lot sooner and there wouldn't have been this high cost for policing," he said, adding that that the protest happened during the summer, so no major university functions or classes were disrupted.
"There was no real concerned raised in anything I saw that university operations were being interfered with. They only had evidence of a peaceful protest, so spending $1.6 million on security raises a lot of questions as to whether the university's money was well spent and was necessary."
Necessary, says Jewish groups
But the protest happened at a time of fear and rising anti-Semitism, including on university campuses, said Dean Lavi, executive director of Jewish London.
"There is a clear, inarguable trend of a rise in anti-Semitism and Jewish hate. It is very prevalent on Canadian and Ontario campuses, and Western is not an outlier. We're seeing it everywhere," Lavi said.
If people felt threatened, then the university was right to spend money on security, he added. "I think the university does a lot to protect Jewish students and I also think there's more work to be done because the incidents haven't stopped...A lot of the conduct that happens at the encampments emboldens people who are anti-Semites."
New protest policy coming
Western is creating a new protest policy, which could include a prohibition on demonstrations that "discredit the university," a sweeping ban that could have far-reaching implications, Haddara said.
"You don't get to create a protest policy that says students are not allowed to discredit the university and then also say you're upholding freedom of expression and that you're a campus that values full dialogue and different ideas. Those two things aren't compatible," she said.
The policy, which some student groups are opposing, will put a chill on all kinds of protests, including ones such as the walk-out calling campus an unsafe place for women, she added. "It's not specific to Muslim and Arab students. This is something that's really going to impact everybody."
But updated rules are needed to ensure safety and security, said university spokesperson Stephen Ledgely.
"With a goal of better managing resources for non-academic events and ensuring the safety and security of the campus community, the university has just completed a multi-staged consultation process with specific constituted groups at Western to capture diverse perspectives on proposed revisions to the policy," he said.
"This feedback will be incorporated into the final draft of the revised policy to be submitted to Senate for information in April and to the Board for approval this spring."
The policy governs the use of university facilities other than academics and was last reviewed in 2008.
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