The Globe and Mail is reporting OPSEU’s serious concerns about the restrictive speech policy hastily adopted by Ontario’s community colleges.
“There was absolutely zero faculty input,” said OPSEU college faculty division chair RM Kennedy in The Globe article.
The Globe highlights OPSEU’s concern that the policy gives colleges the power to “regulate the time, place and manner of freedom of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt normal college operations.”
“It’s absolutely bizarre that they think they can regulate the time and place of free expression on a postsecondary campus. It undermines the very idea of what a postsecondary education is,” said Kennedy in The Globe.
OPSEU President Warren (Smokey) Thomas raised alarm bells about the policy in a media release.
“This so-called free-speech policy is anything but,” Thomas said. “In fact, a better name would be ‘gag-order policy.’
“This is just the latest example of the Ford government’s trampling the democratic rights of the people of Ontario,” Thomas said.