UBC Accountable is an Ad Hoc group of writers who have come together to collectively advocate for due process and to demand that UBC holds an independent investigation into the mishandling of the Steven Galloway debacle, which has destroyed Galloway’s life as he knew it, hurt complainants, undermined public confidence in institutional procedural fairness and caused unprecedented harm to the Canadian Literary Community.
While minor admin tasks are taking care of by a generous group of volunteers, and Carmen Aguirre has kindly agreed to act as media liaison to provide media outlets with information pertinent to the agreed upon fundamentals of our position, we are an ad hoc group without a leadership and have therefore structured our site and all of our communications efforts to reflect the independence and right to free speech of all our signatories.
There are two common statements on our site.
First is the original UBC Accountable Letter which each signatory signed after reading it. Despite assertions to the opposite, the letter has not been amended or changed since publication other than the addition and subtraction of signatories and an additional hyperlink added to the second statement.
The second common statement was drafted to address concerns about the original letter and it was published with the following note:
“The above letter was written in consultation with sexual assault lawyers, past victims of sexual violence and roughly ten writers from our signatory list who have been active in helping us negotiate the conversation over the last two weeks. This letter is an attempt to respectfully and concisely represent the wide range of opinions that we have heard but due to logistics it was not possible to respond in a timely fashion while taking edits and input from all ninety-plus signatories.
All of our signatories have unique perspectives and motivations for signing the open letter and they have been encouraged to express those (and any deviations or clarifications in regard to statements contained in this letter) through the publication of their own personal statements. But they are united in their desire to see due process upheld for all, and in their call for an inquiry into UBC’s bungled process.”
With this in mind, there is no official UBC Accountable position other than what is stated in the original UBC Accountable Letter. As an Ad Hoc collective our signatories speak for and only for themselves as individuals.