More word on the Fight Fees 14 legal case came from U of T on Monday, as the school announced it will consider reopening a probe on whether to start Code of Conduct hearings against the nine U of T students whose criminal charges were dropped last week. The news came from U of T’s Strategic Communications office, which released the school administration’s official response to news of the Crown’s withdrawal of charges related to a sit-in protest in March.
The only U of T student still charged is a minor who cannot be identified.
The nine students whose charges were dropped have entered a “peace bond,” an agreement similar to a restraining order. Under the terms of the peace bond, the nine students may not enter Simcoe Hall without giving a heads-up 24 hours in advance. They also may not demonstrate inside of U of T buildings. The peace bond stays in effect for one year.
“Very often a peace bond is a way of resolving a weak criminal case,” said the students’ lawyer, Mike Leitold.
The prosecutor had not disclosed all the evidence against the students. Leitold said that the Crown had only confronted the students with “a very frail case, but nonetheless the students decided to move their lives forward by getting these very serious charges dropped.”
The university had previously launched an investigation to decide whether to charge the U of T students among the FF14 with violating U of T’s Code of Non-Academic Student Conduct. The code governs student behaviour outside of the classroom, and allows expulsion, an option the school has exercised in the past. According to the administration statement, the investigation was suspended to await further evidence, which was expected to surface during the criminal trial. With that trial now out of the question, the office confirmed that the investigators will now deliberate on whether to resume the probe or close it for good.
FF14 media spokesperson Gabi Rodriguez, herself among the nine students who signed the peace bond, reacted to the news, saying the administration had already promised in writing not to restart the investigation.
“[The administration] were informed of the peace bond terms before they were signed, and agreed that the terms were satisfactory,” said Rodriguez. “It’s kind of why the peace bonds were signed.” According to her, the FF14 feared their charges would be dropped only to have the Code of Conduct procedures resume, and that they sought and obtained the administration’s assurance that this would not happen.
The FF14 had already turned the charges’ withdrawal into an attack on what they called the administration’s use of scare tactics against campus protests, saying the dropped charges were a sign that the university had exaggerated the case against them. A press release issued last March by U of T’s president David Naylor called the sit-in a case of “thuggish tactics by mobs,” and publicly alleged that students at the protests had committed serious crimes including assaulting U of T staff and uttering threats of bodily harm against police officers and their families.
U of T stood by its account of events, denouncing the FF14’s statements as containing “very serious errors” and proposing to set the record straight. The university maintains that staff at Simcoe Hall were “confined against their will and were subjected to abuse and harm” at the sit-in.
“Administrative allegations of harm were not reflected in the charges laid,” said Rodriguez. “The lack of meaningful evidence which led to the dropping of charges seems convincing that our administration is willing to make empty allegations that are entirely political in nature.”
“From our perspective, we see this as the case beginning to crumble,” said Leitold, characterizing the peace bond deal as “a reflection of the weakness of the criminal case and the fact that these were political actions, not criminal actions.”
Both sides of the dispute capped off their respective declarations by taking shots at one another. “The University hopes that, in future, issues of concern will be brought forward in a responsible manner and it will continue to listen and to respond through the various means that exist for responsible dialogue between the University and its constituents,” reads the U of T’s statement.
Rodriguez responded that “frankly, the students hope that in the future the administration will be more responsible. Their entire case fell apart.”
