An open letter to the Algonquin Students' Association,

On Friday, September 1st, 2023, at 11:04AM, Algonquin College’s Acting Director of Risk Management sent out a memo to the college community informing them that a “pro-life” organization will “conduct outreach outdoors on Algonquin College sidewalks in the 2023-2024 academic year” including “handing out leaflets/brochures, holding signs and engaging in discussion.”

Under the pretext of their “Charter Rights”, these individuals, likely from outside the college community, will be attempting to scaremonger about a safe and scientific medical procedure, disrupt our learning environments, and spread their misogynistic perspectives.

Yet despite all of this, the Algonquin Students' Association has yet to provide a public statement on the matter. We call on the Algonquin Students’ Association to publicly condemn their vile beliefs, guarantee that they will advocate to protect students' abortion access, ensure a safe “learning environment that inspires a passion for student success” as is stated in their Mission Statement, and as enshrined in Algonquin Students’ Association By-Law No.1 Article 1 Subsection 3, and bar these demonstrators from Algonquin Students’ Association property, should they attempt to access it. While Algonquin College takes a neutral stance on bodily autonomy, the Algonquin Students' Association owns property on campus, with which they could enforce their property rights, and send a clear pro-choice message. As clubs and campus student groups made up of many members of the Algonquin Students’ Association, we strongly encourage you, to please bar this unspecified “pro-life” organization from our student union property.

It’s also worth considering that the Young Communist League's club was threatened with revocation of status for leafleting. An action that these regressive anti-choice demonstrators, likely from outside our college community, are expected to be engaging in. If the Algonquin Students’ Association allows these anti-choice demonstrators to leaflet near our property, without also allowing clubs within the college community to do the same, then it presents a double standard by which outside organizations are awarded more privileges than those who register with the club system, and limits the abilities of pro-choice organizers to counter these demonstrators.

It is within this context, that we, the undersigned clubs and campus student groups, call upon the Algonquin Students’ Association to express a formal and public statement declaring their support for access to abortion, and to prohibit this unspecified “pro-life” organization from accessing our students’ association property.

Signed,
 

Horizon AC

YCL Algonquin Campus Club

AC’s Pride Community

Algonquin Feminist Coalition

AC Cubed

African Student Alliance

For Media Inquiries:

Harmon Pope - Horizon AC

pope0064@algonquinlive.com

Cashton Perry - YCL Algonquin Campus Club

cashtonperry@gmail.com

343-209-5144

Baz Belliveau - AC’s Pride Community

cler0104@algonquinlive.com