Today at 1:30 p.m., UW admin and the members of the encampment were supposed to meet at the former Grad House Green to discuss and negotiate the terms of the encampment. The meeting was to be live streamed on the @occupyuwaterloo Instagram page so that the student body, faculty, staff and alumni as well as the greater community could be privy to the conversation. However, hours later, the @occupyuwaterloo account confirmed via Instagram that this meeting was cancelled.
In an interview with Nicholas Joseph, the encampment media liaison, he spoke to the original purpose of the meeting. “As far as we know, we were going to meet to discuss our demands and why we’re there for the first time,” he said. The admin has consistently lied to the public and said they’re engaging in a dialogue with the campus — they aren’t.
“[What they have done] is not a dialogue, all they’ve done from the beginning is asked to invade our privacy and do what they call a ‘safety tour.’ We declined, because they already know the operations of the camp and the layout of the materials and everything, because they monitor us with cameras 24/7.”
A special constable vehicle is outside of the encampment that is also there 24/7.
“The only thing that is making us unsafe is their negligence,” Joseph said. “For example, when aggressors come [up] to us, or reporters [with it being] filmed, the university and campus police are made aware [by us]. And still, these people repeatedly show up with no reprimand and still harass us.”
When asked why he believed the university wanted a safety tour, he stated, “I think that one of the reasons that the university would want to engage on the campus is to try to identify people and gather information. I can only speculate as they haven’t declared other reasons, but it’s obviously not for safety reasons.”
A spokesperson for UW said that senior leaders requested a safety inspection to ensure physical safety for all community members, citing it as a common practice for the university under the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
“Once we are able to conduct a safety inspection of the encampment and assure physical safety for all members of the community, we can continue dialogue on the substantive issues raised by the members of the encampment,” the spokesperson said. “This can include the meeting which was previously scheduled with senior leaders for May 22.”
