The University of Waterloo alleges a pattern of aggressive behaviour and vandalism on anti-Israel campus encampments in a $1.5 million lawsuit against organizers. Listed in the statement of claim in the lawsuit filed against Occupy UW with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice include trespassing, damaging property, intimidation and enactment. Allegations against encampment organizers have not yet been proven in court. UW, which is in mediation with the protestors, asked the court to issue an order that would “immediately dismantle and remove any encampment or obstructions erected, built, created, or imposed by them,” reported True North. The lawsuit alleges protesters have been targeting president Vivek Goel and vice-president Charmaine Dean directly. UW says activists made copies of posters with their faces on them. Written below their faces they wrote the school leaders are “wanted for complicity in genocide.”“Genocide Goel,” “Inhumane Charmaine,” the posters read. Activists also circulated an open letter where they called the university president a “f***ing racist”. “You will have no peace until you contribute your fair share of justice to the people of Palestine,” wrote agitators. “Not yours truly, for your hands are red with blood.” The pro-Palestine protesters made stickers that say, “our protest will continue until you DIVEST, BOYCOTT” and “DIVEST. BOYCOTT. CONDEMN GENOCIDE. STOP BEING RACIST BASTARDS,” and scattered them on the floor of the president and VP’s offices, as well as other UW officials, the lawsuit alleges. The university alleges pro-Palestine activists continue to disrupt campus functions, including a June 18 board of governors meeting, where demonstrators “trapped individuals attending the (meeting)” by making a human chain with their bodies, and “made it challenging or impossible for them to enter or exit the board meeting.”Protestors also allegedly crashed UWaterloo Day, an event welcoming freshman students, and a faculty of engineering alumni dinner, where protesters climbed to a floor above the function and shouted at attendees through megaphones. They also chanted pro-Palestine rhetoric and dropped flyers on the people below. The school says in the lawsuit protestors interfered with a campus Pride Month event, where activists “armed with signs and air horns … began chanting aggressively, making accusations that the president and vice-chancellor had blood on his hands and was responsible for 40,000 deaths, among other things. Protestors have been vandalizing campus property with graffiti with phrases like “free Palestine” and “UW is complicit free Palestine.” They erected a banner that reads, “Sufyan Taya Hall – honour our martyrs.”Protestors slammed the university as “shameful” for launching a lawsuit against them. “Incredibly shameful that (UW) is choosing to sue their own student body protesting their universities’ complicity in a genocide,” said organizers, per True North. “We are students who have risked everything we have to protest our universities complicity in this genocide and we refuse to allow those who fund death and destruction to break our resolve.”
