Western University spent $1.6M to police pro-Palestinian campus encampment, docs show

Western University spent more than $1.6-million on security during a two-month pro-Palestinian sit-in on campus last summer, documents obtained by CBC News show. 

The cost, first reported by the student newspaper Western Gazette, drew the ire of protesters who say the university should not have spent the funds to monitor a peaceful encampment. 

"It's very disappointing as a student, to see that's where our university's fiscal priorities are. To be surveilling students and putting almost $2 million toward security for a group of students expressing their discontent with Western and Western's involvement with different companies and industries," said Munya Haddara, the vice president of communications with Western's Muslim Student Association, which has been vocal about the protests on campus since last year. 

The summer encampment, which lasted from May 1 to July 6 2024, was one of many similar protests across the world. It was set up outside of the University Student Centre by the Western Divestment Coalition, and called for Western to stop investing in military contractors and other businesses linked to Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory. 

"There was constant surveillance. There were private investigation trucks set up around campus. People were being filmed constantly," Haddara said, adding that two campus strikes by teaching assistants and facilities workers garnered similar security tactics. 

A document provided by Western University to CBC News breaks down the costs of the protests as follows: 

"You can't surveil students like this and restrict students like this and think it won't have an impact on student expression," Haddara said.

Western University said the expenses were unexpected but necessary to ensure safety on campus.

"Additional expenses included restoring the grounds that had been occupied by the encampment, including cleaning, removing abandoned lumber, structures and other refuse, and restoring sod and plantings," spokesperson Stephen Ledgely wrote in an email. 

"During this time, Western hosted thousands of graduates and their families on our campus to celebrate convocation and some expenses normally incurred were increased as we were required to alter our usual plans."

But universities are also public, civic spaces where intellectual exchange, dissent and protest must be allowed to happen, said Michael Lynk, an emeritus law professor at Western and former United Nations special reporteur for the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories. 

"Was there over-policing? I was not at the camp all that often, but I was there on half a dozen occasions to see what was going on, and I was met with a polite group of people," he said. "It's possible the university treated this as a five-alarm fire when it was a peaceful protest, no damage that I was aware of, no violence." 

The university could have negotiated with protesters over their requests, and had the encampment end sooner, Lynk added. 

"If the university had engaged earlier and more substantively on these issues, the encampment may well have ended a lot sooner and there wouldn't have been this high cost for policing," he said, adding that that the protest happened during the summer, so no major university functions or classes were disrupted.