When Liisa Schofield heard from the Campus Community Police about a public lecture her humanitarian organization was planning, she knew a steep bill was coming. The hundreds of dollars in charges stemmed from the simple fact that the university considered the lecture controversial and demanded police monitoring, at a high cost.

For Schofield’s organization, the Ontario Public Interest Research Group, bills for such mandatory security have significantly outstripped all other event costs combined. The incident has raised the question of exactly who, on a campus of 70,000, decides which issues are controversial.

The lecture in question happened on Nov. 15. Salim Vally, a former South African anti-Apartheid activist now teaching at York University, gave a talk entitled “Apartheid: From South Africa to Palestine” in the Sanford Fleming building near Convocation Hall.

Campus police assessed the need for two officers to police the event. The duo showed up in plainclothes, according to Schofield. “I didn’t actually know that they were officers until we got the invoice,” she said.

That invoice came four days later, billing OPIRG $440 for the service of two officers, at $55 per hour each, for four hours. By contrast, OPIRG paid about $100 for all other costs of the event, mostly for A/V equipment. They do not normally pay booking fees on campus. U of T’s Office of Space Management notified OPIRG that, unless they pay the bill, they will be barred from booking campus space in the future.

“That’s the entire annual budget for an action group,” Schofield said of the bill.

Last October, OPIRG hosted activist Tariq Ali for a talk called “Imperial Blues: Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine.” According to Schofield, police called to notify her of the security presence at the last minute, at a time when OPIRG’s offices are normally closed. OPIRG was billed for security, refused to pay, and contacted Student Affairs. Jim Delaney, the assistant director of Student Affairs, took some of the pressure off OPIRG’s payment and assured Schofield he would arrange a meeting between OPIRG and the campus police to discuss fees and the risk assessment process for events. That meeting has not yet happened.

Schofield was highly critical of the decision that Vally’s talk posed a security risk.

“The only two events we’ve had police are Tariq Ali and Salim Vally, two Arab-Muslim-sounding names speaking about Middle-Eastern politics.” She remarked that more politically radical guests, such as those who spoke at the Latin Solidarity Collective’s “Mayan Struggle in Guatemala” event, drew no security attention.

When The Varsity called to ask about event security procedures, Campus Community Police operations manager Sam D’Angelo declined to comment and immediately hung up. At press time, staff sergeant Mike Munroe, the top-ranking officer in the unit tasked with event security, had not returned phone calls and could not be reached by email.

Andy Allen, the manager of the OSM, said the police scan his office’s records of upcoming events and choose some for risk assessment. Neither Delaney, Allen, nor the university communications office to which campus police refer media inquiries knew how assessments were conducted.

According to Allen, if police determine the event requires security, they tell the OSM how many officers should police the event. The OSM then informs the event holders, who, according to Allen, are always expected to pay the associated cost. If they do not, the event is canceled.

University policy documents available online at the OSM website and through Governing Council, however, say recognized campus groups do not it requires opening a normally closed building. Allen said the policy on the OSM website, dated 1995, was obsolete.

Delaney confirmed that a version of that same policy, put into effect in 1988 and available on Governing Council’s website, was still in effect with the nopay clause for recognized groups. He stressed that the 19-year-old policy was dated by U of T standards and that under to normal expectations, practices would not always conform to policy guidelines.

Delaney added that OPIRG does not have status as a recognized campus group this year. Student Affairs grants such status to eligible student groups on an annual basis, and while OPIRG was recognized last year, Delaney was unaware of them reapplying this year.

OPIRG has nine action groups, semiindependent teams of students promoting specific social justice agendas. The Nov. 15 event was organized by Students Against Israeli Apartheid. Other action groups include the Critical Area Studies Collective, a No One Is Illegal immigrantrights group, and the equity gardeners who maintain a public food garden on St. George campus.

OPIRG staffers like Schofield, who volunteered for OPIRG at York before he was hired full-time downtown, give guidance and coordination, and fund each group with $400 to $550 per year.

“We don’t have that kind of operating budget [to pay] for every event we do that is termed ‘controversial.’ These costs will be prohibitive for organizations that want to hold political events, and that’s essentially shutting down those events,” said Schofield.

At an unrelated event last Thursday, CEPAL, the Canadian-Palestinian Educational Exchange, hosted a lecture by Norman Finkelstein at OISE. Four campus cops and two city police officers for 53 division, OISE’s district, patrolled the talk.

Shannon Dow, CEPAL’s president, declined to give exact figures, but if CEPAL was charged the same rates as OPIRG for policing, the bill for their five-hour event would come to about $1,650. Booking fees for the event space would not have exceeded $400 under the OSM’s highest hourly rate.

“The [security] costs are high, you could put it that way. And it’s not very fair to humanitarian organizations like CEPAL, and I’ve expressed this to security here,” said Dow after the lecture. “It’s a bit outrageous that it should cost so much for security on an event like this,” she added.

Staff Sgt. Al Hastings was among the campus police at the event. He was not in uniform, though the other officers were.

According to Hastings, the scale of police presence depends on such factors as whether the event was sanctioned by U of T, the features of the venue, whether it concerns a controversial issue, and whether the group holding the event has what Hastings called “a history.”

“We’ve got to create an environment that’s safe and that allows for free speech,” Hastings said.

He noted that around 15 protesters showed up. They were allowed inside but had to leave placards behind because they could be used as weapons.

Delaney said he was concerned about the issue raised by OPIRG, and that he did not know why it has not yet been resolved. Schofield and others have called the mandatory charges a selective barrier to freedom of expression.

“It can become a part of censoring students […] if they are then given a bill running into hundreds of dollars, which would obviously make people think twice before having an event,” said Vally.

Arts and Science Students’ Union president Ryan Hayes voiced expressed similar views. “No one has money on campus to organize events and pay $500 for security, so effectively that’s just saying ‘don’t hold those events, don’t question these topics.’”

OPIRG has demanded to meet with Student Affairs and campus police, and that the university foot their bill. The University of Toronto Students’ Union, ASSU, and the Association of Part-time Undergraduate Students have signed a letter of support.

With files from Naushad Ali Husein