Ombudsman Rules in Favour of Student Suspended for “F*ck Israel” Post

 

The English Montreal School Board was ordered to retrain staff on its anti-bullying policy and students’ rights.

Royal West Academy has been rebuked by a provincial watchdog for suspending a student who posted “Fuck Israel. Holy shit” on her private Instagram last year.

Quebec’s student ombudsman has ordered the school and the English Montreal School Board (EMSB) to retrain relevant staff on the school board’s antibullying policy. It also demanded they review how to apply disciplinary sanctions in a way that respects students’ rights.

In a February ruling, the ombudsman overturned Royal West’s decision to punish a student because she used a curse word to criticize Israel on her private social media account. An administrator told the student, who we’ll call Dawn, that her post made Jewish classmates feel unsafe. 

Dawn’s family challenged the decision before the ombudsman, who ruled in their favour late last month.

But while the EMSB responded to the ombudsman’s ruling on Feb. 27, it did not inform Dawn or her family. It only wrote an email to the student two weeks later, after her parents inquired about the case.

“Unfortunately, we neglected to forward the letter to your attention,” an employee on the EMSB wrote in an email to Dawn’s family.

Members of the group Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV) protested outside EMSB’s head office on March 17, demanding the board publicly apologize to Dawn. They also denounced the school board’s participation in a fundraiser that would send three EMSB students to Israel as it wages a war that killed 1,300 Iranian civilians in less than a month.  (more...)

Ombudsman Rules in Favour of Student Suspended for “F*ck Israel” Post