University of Alberta administration, students clash over campus residences

Students at the University of Alberta are asking for an independent inquiry into how campus residences are run, saying that long-running complaints about harsh punishments for students in residence, unfair residence staff and poor maintenance of living spaces need to be thoroughly investigated.

"We don't like paternalism when it comes to students. We are adults and we have the capacity to help make decisions," said Navneet Khinda, the president of the University of Alberta Students' Union. "This is a place to learn from mistakes."

Ms. Khinda had been negotiating with the university administration over the suspension of the Lister Hall Students Association (LHSA), a student group that represents approximately 1,800 students living at Lister Hall. Four towers make up the residence, the country's largest.

Last summer, the university suspended the LHSA for two years after finding that there had been hazing incidents during some of the student activities it organized. It is not clear what the hazing involved. Talks to end that suspension early failed this week, and current and former residents have been lighting up social media with complaints stretching back years.

The students say that residence staff kept lists of students who were banned from residence, charged unreasonable cleaning fees, threw out belongings and did not deal with pest and maintenance issues effectively. But the key complaint is that the university unfairly disciplined students who were involved in the LHSA.

"Not allowing a student residence association to exist is very punitive and very harmful because it takes away from community life for two to three years," Ms. Khinda said.

Battles between university administrations and students over safety on campus have been heating up across the country, primarily around inadequate responses by schools to sexual assault and harassment. But ensuring campuses are safe should not mean taking away students' freedoms or responsibilities, the students at the University of Alberta say.

"If you put 1,800 students together in close quarters, they are going to drink, they are going to get a little bit rowdy, that is the not the fault of student leaders," said Nicholas Diaz, who was vice-president of student life at the students' union last year. "The student leaders are there to make sure the residents have mentors and they're happy and healthy."

Student safety is paramount, the school said.

"We try to make sure that it's a safe environment, that there is not secret hazing or sexual abuse or inappropriate peer pressure," said Wendy Rodgers, deputy provost at the university. "The students are adults, they can make their own decisions, but we are very concerned with the quality of life that we have and we don't want backroom kinds of behaviour."

Changing student culture has been a continuing issue. Two years ago, for example, as part of maintenance, the school whitewashed the walls of underground tunnels connecting the four towers, home to decades of murals painted by previous generations of students.

A YouTube video posted by the university explained the paint job as a way to encourage the university's academic mission.

"There was a need to address some of the imagery presented in the tunnels that dated back some time ago," said Dr. Rodgers, who added that the university and the residents' association worked together.

But students disagreed, arguing that the project erased their history.

"Some of the murals were from the sixties or seventies, when rules were not in place, and they had a martini glass or a liquor bottle," said Leila Raye-Crofton, the last elected president of the LHSA.

The residence is named for Reg Lister, a long-time university administrator who lived in the basement of a campus residence with his family between 1920 and 1930. According to a memoir of his 45 years at the university, Mr. Lister – who also used to host student parties in his family's kitchen – had developed a very different philosophy of how to manage campus life from what is acceptable today.

"You cannot pester students about little things as it only annoys them and makes them worse," Mr. Lister wrote. "You cannot see everything the students do, some things are best not seen."