Breaking the McGill administration’s silence on Dean of Law Daniel Jutras’ report on November 10, Principal Heather Munroe-Blum has announced that the administration accepts the report and intends to implement all recommendations.
“Before confirming the plans for implementation, and as I committed to do in December, I will await the benefit of hearing the discussion at Senate,” wrote Munroe-Blum in her memorandum prior to Senate.
Jutras introduced his report and said he was “quite confident that the text of the narrative is correct [due to] the plurality of perspectives with respect to each account of the event.” Jutras said he hoped the report would serve as a starting point.
Arts senator Matthew Crawford requested that the McGill administration acknowledge the lack of evidence of violence on the part of the 14 student occupiers in the James Administration building. Crawford is one of the 14 individuals who occupied the fifth floor.
Darin Barney, senator and associate professor in Art History and Communication Studies, said that protestors explained their intention of a peaceful occupation from the start of their action. Barney continued to state that based on Jutras’ report, within eight minutes of the occupation’s beginning the students’ political intentions were known.
Barney stated that subsequent contact with the police, and, in particular violence outside the building, was “…[an] unjustifiable response to a justifiable political action.”
“Any university that doesn’t know the place it must make for political activism has already lost its way… University is supposed to be a place where political activism, and its dissent, should, uniquely, be allowed,” Barney added.
After the meeting, Munroe-Blum told The Daily that “a lot of different views were expressed and a lot of different recommendations came into play.”
“I’m meeting with the student leaders coming up… This should not be the only formal administrative response to the Jutras report – there will be other undertakings that will happen,” she added.
SSMU President Maggie Knight spoke to student input in the implementation of Jutras’ recommendations and other recommendations not in the report.
“We don’t have a concrete idea of what that looks like, or how we’ll be involved,” she said. “We’ll be following up with the administration to try to clarify that.”
– with files from Erin Hudson