This petition is addressed to President Ed McCauley, the Vice Provost and the Board of Governors of the University of Calgary.

We are students, faculty, alumni, financial contributors to the University of Calgary and concerned community members.

This is our campus. This is our university.

We watched the events of Thursday night May 9, 2024 in shock and horror.

We are disgusted.

We are disappointed.

We are deeply hurt.

We condemn in the strongest of terms the disproportionate and violent display of police brutality against unarmed, unprotected, peaceful protesters that we witnessed live-streamed on social media for the whole world to see. When night fell and police began firing explosive devices into the crowd, I wondered, was this the UofC anymore or were we transported to Tiananmen Square '89?

May 9, 2024 will live in infamy as the day the University of Calgary's leadership callously summoned police armed with riot gear, guns, rubber bullets, pepper spray, explosive devices, flashbangs and white privilege to forcefully evict a diverse gathering of young students who peacefully set up an encampment protest on a UofC lawn. Let us be clear, the students were not assembling on someone else's private property, they were on the lawn of their own university, their own academic home to which they pay tuition. Within hours of setting up a few tents, the police first arrived. And by the end of the night, after a day of peacefully protesting, students were arrested, beaten, and elderly members of the public tackled to the ground.

Never in my long years as a student there did I ever see police forcefully evict tent encampment protesters or peaceful protesters occupying a lawn with permanent structures no matter how vocal they were. In earlier years, I recall for days to weeks at a time "Pro-Life" would set up barricades, cordon off spaces and display graphic images - I never saw this type of heavy-handed response then. The "Pro-Choice" would set up a tent village within earshot of them for days or weeks at a time - also no severe response. No riot gear, no tear gas. Many of us will recall this. It seems encampment/lawn occupying protests are tolerated by University leadership as long as the protesters don't include racialized individuals asking for the University to do it's part in divesting from the genocide of Indigenous Palestinian peoples.

Those protesting their University's ties (financial or otherwise) to companies, people, institutions, or countries engaging or aiding in genocide and apartheid are no less entitled to make their voices heard on these matters and to do so in safety, and in the same fashion as any other student group. The notion that indigenous Palestinians are humans with inalienable rights (food, shelter, self-determination, life free from genocide and apartheid) is not controversial, radical or a threat to anyone's safety.

The UofC student protestors yesterday followed in the footsteps of the likes of the Vietnam War college protesters, the anti-South African apartheid college encampment protesters, and the non violent protesters accompanying the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ghandi. They should be applauded for having shown true moral courage where others have failed. These young intellectuals are the steadfast moral conscience of this University and nation. They are holding the line, despite the vast threats they face to their future careers or personal safety.

The University administration has betrayed their students by setting the police on them and there needs to be accountability for this reckless decision to endanger them. They have shown that they do not respect their students' ideas, their academic freedom or value their safety. The University administration is on the wrong side of history. President Ed MCauley is on the wrong side of history. They must make a course correction, if they have any hope of being exonerated in the books of history.

We demand the following from the adminstration entrusted with the care of the University of Calgary, OUR UNIVERSITY:

• We demand an apology from President Ed McCauley and Vice-Provost for their roles in this disaster for the needless escalation they invoked by summoning the police.

• We demand the board of Governors, of this university - our university- takes action to censure and sanction them for such a reckless decision that endangered so many students. There must be accountability and severe consequences.

• We demand the leadership of our university, stops taking a heavy-handed approach to those protesting for Palestinian human rights and calling for divestment from apartheid and genocide. Stop calling the cops on your own students, your own children.

• We demand the University of Calgary's leadership protect and provide support to all their students. This includes their racialized students, their Palestinian students, their Muslim students, their pro-Palestinian human rights students and all their students. 

• We demand the University drop any plans for suspensions or academic sanctions of any kind for students engaged in peaceful protests.

• We demand the University leadership meet with student protesters and discuss their legitimate demands and have a conversation with them in peace, just as the protesters were and are peaceful.

• We demand the University administration educate themselves on the current genocide, the ongoing apartheid and violent dispossession of indigenous Palestinians from their own "home and native land". Atrocities that have continued with the support of Canada (As it unearths indigenous victims of it's own genocide) and it's academic institutions.

• We demand the University disclose and divest ties with institutions, people, nations engaged or complicit in conducting or perpetuating genocide and apartheid against indigenous Palestinian people.

• We demand the University leadership condemn the scholasticide taking place in Gaza, the complete destruction of all places of learning, of students, and of Academics.

We implore you wake up and smell the genocide! Wake up on the right side of history.