(updates below)
A student protest organized in response to New College’s 20 per cent residence fee increase took a dramatic turn at approximately 1:30 this afternoon, when roughly 35 students entered Simcoe Hall, the university’s main administrative building, and refused to leave, chanting “occupation is a crime.” Though the demonstration began as a protest of the residence fee hike, other causes quickly became involved.
Shortly after 5 p.m., the students–some of whom are from the leftist campus group Always Question–were still sitting and standing in the second floor corridor of Simcoe Hall. Parmbir Gill, a member of Always Question, spoke to The Varsity from inside the building.
“We want to ensure that people know that our scope is not just limited to tuition fees,” said Gill. “We want to take a stand in our solidarity to the Palestinian struggle. Palestinian students are not able to go to school because of the Israeli bombardment.”
The New College Students’ Council, who initially endorsed the rally on the understanding that it was solely in protest of increased residence fees, withdrew their support for the rally when Always Question members made other demands. Jason Marin, the president of NCSC, broke ties with Always Question in a statement released on Facebook.
“At no time did AlwaysQuestion indicate that the rally would lead to a sit-in at Simcoe Hall and make other demands that are unrelated to the New College student community,” read the statement.
Officers from campus police are standing at the doors of Simcoe Hall, but so far no one has directly asked the protestors to leave the building, or attempted to forcibly remove them.
The protest’s organizers say that they will stay until three demands, distributed through a Facebook group, are met. They are asking for an “immediate” meeting with university president David Naylor, a reversal of the New College residence fee increase, and the chance to make a short presentation at Tuesday’s University Affairs Board meeting.
In the short run, there are practical problems to attend to.
“We’ve attempted to bring food up through a rope from the second floor window, because we are hungry, and the police took it down and they said that we can’t,” said Gill. “We’re going to try to do something because we need to eat.”
Neither the university administration nor communications staff were available for comment.
UPDATE 7:00pm
The student protesters were removed from Simcoe Hall at approximately 6:30 p.m. by Toronto police officers. Rob Steiner, a spokesperson for U of T, said that the protesters left voluntarily, but several of them claimed to have received injuries when police entered the building to break up the demonstration. During the confrontation with police, the crowd chanted that police should leave campus immediately.
The crowd also shouted “They’re pigs, they’re not even human,” although it was not clear whether they were referring to the police, the university administration, or some other group.
Asked for the university’s response to the students’ demands, Steiner said he was unaware of any demands and could not comment.
At this time, the group has moved to the University of Toronto Student’s Union office to “regroup” and discuss their next step.
With files from Allison Martell, Naushad Ali Husein, and Dan Epstein
