Western University students organize massive rally against booster mandate
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Summary
In protest of Western s new vaccine mandate, students, alumni, faculty, staff and supporters gathered on campus to protest the policy. In a press conference, Dr. Julie Panessi, a former Huron University College professor of ethics, who has not stepped foot on campus in the last two years, explains why Western's vaccine mandate is an attack on student privacy.
Transcript
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Andrew Lawton from True North. I am on the campus at Western University in London, Ontario,
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where Enough is Enough Western, a group of students frustrated and fed up with the vaccine
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mandate that Western has put in place for booster shots for the next year, were rallying together.
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Hundreds of them came out, not just current and prospective students, but also Western alumni,
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some faculty members, staff and supporters from the community. And the message was a very clear
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one. Enough is enough. It wasn't about opposition to vaccines or vaccines in the context of COVID.
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It was just about opposition to vaccine mandates. Organizer Kendra Hancock summed that up very well.
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We need to have choice restored on campus. Well, the first thing was we launched an online campaign
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and we heard students' concerns and we heard about what they wanted to do. And I'd say the
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feedback was overwhelming that they wanted to get a student demonstration together. So we had the
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channels, we had the resources, so we wanted to get that together. And that's what we're doing here
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today to represent them. Among the speakers was Julie Panessi, a former Huron University College
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professor of ethics who has not stepped foot on Western's campus in the last two years. She's not
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returned to this campus since she was fired last year for non-compliance with the vaccine mandate.
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And as Dr. Julie Panessi said, Western is ambushing its students with this mandate.
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Today, you know, it was the time to come. It was the day to come. It's Western, their response continuing
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this mandate is an irrational, evidence-less ambush and assault on students. And everybody
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should be here today standing up for themselves. Western imposed this mandate with just two weeks
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to go until classes start, one week after tuition payments were due. So for a lot of students,
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they still to this day do not know what's going to happen in the year ahead. The hope is of course
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that Western is going to fold. There are some other legal challenges afoot or prospective legal
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challenges. One of them is from Lisa Bildy, a London, Ontario lawyer with Libertas, who has sent a
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letter on behalf of a number of Western students and parents calling for accountability on this. And
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there's a very narrow focus. This violates Western's own obligations to privacy. Well, we're saying,
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look, there's a lot of reasons that we could be opposing this mandate. And we may in the future
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go after them on a number of other causes of action. But to get this matter before the courts
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quickly, we're focusing on the breach of privacy issue. We don't believe that they have the authority
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anymore, if they ever did. But under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act,
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which they're claiming that they're doing this collection of personal medical information under,
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we don't believe they have the authority. Now that the orders under the Reopening Ontario Act have been
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lifted and the emergency is no longer in effect, I think they've lost their foundation for that. So
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if they can't collect the data, then they really shouldn't be mandating this on anyone. Leave it to
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personal choice and people can make the choices that they want. What's your view on the lack of
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notice? Is that something that is in accord a compelling argument that this policy did not give
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anyone an opportunity to make alternative arrangements if for whatever reason they couldn't
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comply with it? Well, absolutely. Just on a moral level, it's egregious. I mean, there's all sorts of
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students who've now assumed that Western wasn't going to impose a policy because they, you know,
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they hadn't done so for so long and have signed leases. I mean, I have one family that signed a
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multi-year lease and so, you know, it's appalling. There's going to be a lot of people who will,
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again, either feel coerced or who will be out of pocket a lot of money or will have their
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educations disrupted. All of those here were very clear, enough is enough. From Western University