Over the weekend of Jan. 21–22, stickers were posted on buildings across the University of Waterloo’s campus displaying anti-vaccine and anti-mask mandate sentiments.
In a written statement, SLC manager of facility operations, Scott Pearson, described his experience witnessing and removing the stickers of varying sizes. “I witnessed all of the stickers on various buildings enroute to the SLC early Monday morning…The larger stickers were easy to remove but the smaller size sticker[s] came apart and left residue on the surfaces.”
Pearson explained the difficulty of removing some of the stickers, stating, “Some of the stickers were placed on the campus wayfinding signs and Plant Ops [Plant Operations] had to use solvents to remove the residue.”
According to Pearson, the majority of the damage in the SLC was cleaned up prior to 8:00 a.m. on Jan. 23, with Plant Ops cleaning up the rest by early afternoon.
WUSA president Stephanie Ye-Mowe described her initial reaction to the news as a little surprised, particularly with regards to the timing of the campaign. As of this article, UW does not have a mask mandate in place and its vaccine mandate remains suspended.
Despite the lack of existing mandates, on the same weekend, an anti-vaccine rally was held in Waterloo Public Square, with several political figures present, including Maxime Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada, and MPP Randy Hillier, who represents the Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston riding. Bernier denounced the mandates, while Hillier labeled those who enforced them “enemies of freedom.”
In July 2022, anti-vaccine stickers were also put up in Waterloo Park. These stickers claimed to seek justice for those who had experienced serious negative side effects from vaccination. The two incidents do not seem to be related.
Ye-Mowe stated that she had heard students having conversations about the mandates and theorized that concerns about the mandates suddenly coming back could lead to a campaign like this.
“It was just a little bit strange because like earlier in the pandemic, when I was in my VP [of education] role, I was getting a lot of emails, and there was a lot of talk and back and forth around vaccine mandates and mask mandates, and it’s since been thoroughly crickets for the last couple of months right now,” Ye-Mowe said.
Ye-Mowe acknowledged the potential for problems to arise from vaccine mandates, citing accessibility issues as well as conflicting vaccine standards between different countries as examples of things that WUSA had recognized and discussed. She emphasized the importance of having open conversations despite having differing opinions and of carrying out such conversations in proper ways.
“We value the ability for everyone to have their own opinions and have constructive dialogue,” she said. “And it can be uncomfortable when we see things that we think threaten public safety or would be bad for us if we went in that direction…I would just ask everyone to trust other people, and to recognize that this is a place for dialogue, that people do have the right to ask questions or to state their opinions or whatnot.”
Ye-Mowe described the difficulties the stickers created for the school’s custodians to emphasize the importance of respectful, open dialogue.
“Please respect our janitors,” Ye-Mowe concluded. “I know that stickers, they don’t seem like they hurt anyone, [but] again, it’s very frustrating for the custodial services that have to peel them off of windows and off of different things. It damages walls, it makes it harder for us to get approvals to put up posters and do other things.”
