Some forms of communication are more equal than others. That’s the lesson a group of eight undergraduate students at Western Univer­sity say they learned after campus police asked them to stop distributing leaflets criticizing corporate influence on student orientation week.

“It’s a concrete manifestation of how corporate interests have taken over the campus and orientation week,” said protest organizer Jordan Coop. “It’s the sad reality of freedom of expression on campus that corporate interests are allowed to speak to students, but students who criticize those interests are not welcome.”

Coop and his colleagues, members of the student activist group Western Solidarity Network, were approached by police the evening of Sept. 3 while distributing the leaflets outside the fencing surrounding the site of orientation week activities. Rife with information about the ballooning student debt in Ontario and the “predominance of corporate interests at Western,” the pamphlet notes that students were being charged $86 for an O-Pass wristband to attend orientation week events. It also criticized the proliferation of corporate promotional booths during the campus festival and other events associated with frosh week that target participants as “consumers first, students second.”

“Since O-Week activities are intended exclusively for first-year students, campus police approached the demonstrators and suggested it was not the appropriate time or place to stage their protest,” said Gitta Kulczycki, vice-president of resources and operations at Western in an email response.

Kulczycki said police asked the students to relocate, but Coop says although they were allowed to collect their bikes, it was clear the police wished for them to leave campus.

The students say police asked for their university ID cards and recorded their names.

“The university’s action is an unacceptable violation of freedom of expression, something that should be an ultimate value in any university,” said CAUT executive director James Turk. “Apparently at Western, expressive freedom does not extend to criticism of the university or corporate sponsors of its student orientation week.”

The incident caught the attention of the deans of the university’s faculty of information and media studies. They’ve posted an open letter expressing their concern, writing “it seems to raise grave issues related to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and the possibilities of open intellectual exchange.” Acting Dean Nick Dyer-Witheford has also asked the administration to investigate.

Jeff Tennant, president of Western’s faculty association, said he’s concerned about the “implications of the actions of the campus police for students’ right to free speech and assembly.”