Statement from Brian Sullivan, Vice President, Students
It is a relief for the UBC community to know that a suspect has been identified and that criminal charges have been laid regarding threats that disrupted thousands of lives at our Vancouver campus on January 30 and again on February 6 of this year.
For more information, please see the RCMP news release at: www.rcmp-bcmedia.ca/index2.html (click on the “news releases” link).
Great distress has been reported by students, faculty and staff who were in the Bio Sciences Building on the afternoon of January 30 when RCMP officers locked down the building over a period of hours in an attempt to isolate and neutralize the substantive threat.
A week later, another threat — less time- and location-specific — resulted in a campus wide alert and classes being cancelled in the Biological Sciences building.
A university is by its very nature a place of openness and community. Vigorous and civil discussion of ideas is essential and depends absolutely on an atmosphere of safety and security, the disruption of which is a matter of the utmost gravity.
In addition to the normal criminal code provisions, the University has its own internal discipline processes. These provide due process, of course, and can result in penalties up to and including expulsion from the university community.
Our community’s feeling of relief today is accompanied by gratitude to the RCMP for the speed and professionalism of their response and investigation.
Brian Sullivan
Vice President, Students
University of British Columbia
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