Some Muslim students at Ontario Tech are raising concerns about how the university decides permissions for student-run events.
The Muslim Student Association (MSA) says the university unfairly intervened to cancel or prevent events hosted by the club – and even bypassed the Ontario Tech Student Union (OTSU) – while making these decisions.
Zeid Rehman, a fifth-year Mechatronics Engineering student, was president of the MSA last year when he says four consecutive events were either cancelled or denied by the administration.
“The way it was handled, this felt to my community that we were actually being subjugated, silenced,” Rehman says, describing the discussions.
The first of these events was to be held in October 2024 jointly with the Palestine Youth Association, also a student club on campus.
“And they were hosting an event just talking about like, you know, the history of Palestine, just for people to be educated on what it means to be Palestinian, their culture and things like that,” says Rehman.
Rehman says the university asked for a meeting with the president of the Palestine Youth Association the night before the event.
Rehman says the administration objected to the sale of Palestinian keffiyahs (scarves), a cultural symbol of the region.
Rehman adds the university was informed about the sale of these items, and students were selling them as part of fundraising efforts for Palestinians in Gaza. They continued to sell them even after the university raised objections.
Following this, Rehman says he tried to organize three more events with the MSA. Discussions on the history of Islam and the life of Prophet Muhammad were proposed in January and February but were not allowed, he says.
Rehman says the administration cited the “political climate right now” as the reason both times.
“And again, I didn’t understand the reason. I kept pushing on this and asking, ‘What do you mean by political climate?'” he says. “They didn’t give me any information. They just said this is just what the university has decided.”
The flashpoint for the MSA was the cancellation of a ‘Grand Iftar’ event in March. Rehman says the university worked with them in the beginning, “and then all of a sudden, they told us that we can’t have this event.”
Rehman says the same event was held the previous year “with no issues.” He says the university did not provide a reason “right away,” and when it did, the administration said it did not have the resources and facilities to host 700 guests as requested by the MSA.
Rehman says the university “didn’t give us any room to discuss” possible solutions and that the “gym was booked a year in advance.”
Ontario Tech University declined an interview but responded to questions in an email. It said each proposed event is evaluated individually, considering “safety, logistics, and compliance with University policy, not on the content of faith-based or cultural programming.”
The university added decisions were also based on concerns related to “safety, event scale, and missing information in the application” and reflected the short times before the event dates.
Intervention by advocacy group NCCM
The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), an advocacy group, has published an online petition terming the cancellations as “discriminatory” and calling on the administration to “ensure a fair, transparent event approval process.”
Steven Zhou, the council’s spokesperson, says the MSA’s experience is part of a broader trend on campuses across Ontario and Canada.
Zhou criticizes the “wholesale” association and conflation of Arab and Muslim identity or Palestinian advocacy with “security threats.”
“And I think education systems in Canada and Ontario should not fall into that pattern.” he says. “Unfortunately, we’re seeing these troubling examples of them doing so, and that’s just a shame.”
Zhou says the affected students “felt fairly powerless against the administration, and even with our help, the events were not reinstated.”
He calls this a “systemic violation” of the Muslim students’ right to assert their identity by having their events “affirmed” within the campus space at Ontario Tech.
Role of the student union
Rehman says he was contacted directly by the university about three of the cancellations.
He links the university’s stance to the wave of student encampments across Canada in support of Palestine since October 2023.
This is echoed by Zhou and Rai Ali, the former president of the OTSU. Ali believes the increased “scrutiny” of the MSA – and cancellation of their events – is related to encampments. He says the measures taken by the university were “too drastic.”
He says the administration did not reach out to the student union, which is ordinarily the middle body between the university and student clubs.
In its emailed statement, the university said the OTSU was short-staffed so it stepped in to “help keep processes moving.”
Ontario Tech adds there was a short window for the timing with one of the MSA’s event requests, which is why the student union was not consulted. However, the administration says the OTSU executive was informed.
Rebuilding trust and moving forward
Those involved say the cancellations have impacted their relationship with the university, which has been otherwise positive outside of these specific events.
“[If] we say ‘yes’ to the event and then last minute the university cancels it, and this happens not just once, two or three or four times, then the students start to lose trust on the student union,” Ali says.
Sara Elgezzar, a fourth-year Biomedical Science student and current president of the MSA, says she took on the role as a way to give back “because I’ve felt the effect of the Muslim Student Association on my own life and my own experience on campus.”
She describes the event cancellations as “honestly, very disheartening.”
“So, as of right now, we haven’t been able to conduct any of events at the same scale as the ones that were denied last year,” Elgezzar says, adding the MSA has been able to hold “small events,” while taking “precautions” with the process.
She says this will not prevent them from trying, “but unfortunately, that precautionary mindset is there, and it’s an effect of issues that happened last year.”
Elgezzar says club activities have value for students as a place to socialize, learn and de-stress.
“It’s a little sad to see that I’m paying for an education and an environment that I’m not totally receiving the complete benefit of,” she says.
Elgezzar adds while “our campus is a safe space, thankfully, and dialogues are encouraged,” more can be done.
“I think there would have to be a lot of things done for me to give you the answer of ‘yes, I do feel safe and included as a Muslim female student on campus,’” she says. “But as of right now, I’m in my fourth year and I cannot confidently say ‘yes’ to that question.”