Building safe(r) spaces held following “Fuck Safe Space” controversy
Carleton students and faculty are hosting a panel in response to the “Fuck Safe Space” T-shirts worn during Frosh Week on Sept.23 from 12–2 p.m. The Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) and faculty members are hosting Building Safe(r) Spaces in the River Building Atrium at Carleton University.
The panel will include law and legal studies professors Dawn Moore and Doris Buss, fourth-year undergraduate student Julia Allen, and social worker DJ Freedman. Leslie Robertson, an Ottawa-based lawyer, as well as the first person to post photos of the offending shirts, will also be a panelist.
A town hall led by Dillon Black, a student at Carleton and the project coordinator for The Ottawa Coalition To End Violence Against Women (OCTEVAW), will be held following the panel.
“The GSA recognizes that these shirts are not an isolated incident,” said GSA president Christina Muehlberger. “The choice to reject safe space stems from a campus culture that does not prioritize the well-being of minority students. Our campaigns are actively working to challenge this culture and create safe(r) spaces on our campus, and this event is contributing to this work.”
The Ottawa community was outraged when several student frosh leaders from Carleton were photographed wearing T-shirts that said “Fuck Safe Space”on Sept. 7. This came after a Carleton student was charged with three counts of sexual assault and banned from all Ottawa post-secondary institutions on Sept 5.
