‘White students union’ posters spark outrage
Flyers posted in Toronto universities violate schools’ codes of conduct
Posters promoting a white students union popped up Monday at three Toronto universities, and were taken down as fast as they went up.
The posters show a stylized image of two white men in front of a Toronto cityscape, with the CN Tower visible in the background. The words “White Students Union!” are scrawled along the bottom, with a website linking to a group called Students for Western Civilization.
Fraser Macpherson, a student at Ryerson University, stumbled on to one of the posters at 7:30 a.m. on Gould St. After googling the website at the bottom of the poster, Macpherson said he took a photo of the flyer, posted it on Twitter, then tore it down and threw it in the trash.
“I was not expecting to see something like this,” he said.
The posters were also found on campus at York University and the University of Toronto. A spokesperson for York confirmed eight posters had been removed early Monday. Michael Forbes, a spokesman for U of T, said there had been reports of the posters on campus, but said none had been recovered by security staff. Both universities said the posters violated the universities’ code of conduct.
“We do not condone this. We find it offensive,” Forbes said.
Forbes said the group wasn’t known to the university before. The group’s website included a contact page linking to a Facebook group, but requests for comment were not answered.
The event is renewing calls by some for conversations around racism and safe spaces on university campuses. Chrys Saget-Richard, a member of Ryerson’s Racialised Students’ Collective, an on-campus group dedicated to creating an “anti-racist climate” at the school, said the posters show racism still exists in Canada.
“A lot of people (will say) ‘It’s worse in the States. Racism doesn’t exist in Canada, we’re very polite,’ all of these things. But it’s happening here, on our campuses, in our communities,” Saget-Richard said.
The Students for Western Civilization website included a link to an interview with Ricardo Duchesne, a professor at the University of New Brunswick who previously came under fire for arguing that Asian immigrants hurt Canada’s European character.
Duchesne told the Star on Monday he is not upset with being associated with the group, and criticized what he called a double standard in the media and academia against white and European pride.
“There are black student unions, Asian student unions, but for some reason people react in a very negative way against a white student union,” Duchesne said. “They assume that it is racist, that there’s something inherently wrong with it.”
Saget-Richard said people who don’t think a white student union is racist because black students have a union don’t understand what racism is. “They don’t understand that it’s not just ‘I don’t like you because of the colour of your skin.’ It’s a structural, systemic issue, and it goes far beyond the colour of your skin,” Saget-Richard said.
He hopes the posters will start a conversation about racism and safe space, but said it’s still worrying that people believe a white student union needs to exist.
“It makes me nervous because people who might buy into this are walking on our campuses.”