Has a 17-year-old student who filmed a teacher at her school on a bar dance floor last month committed a crime of ‘lese majesty’? Did the Montreal private school that expelled them after the video went viral release the ‘heavy cavalry’? This teenager’s parents are demanding $215,000 from Collège Notre-Dame.
Posted at 7:15 p.m
An “exceeding of jurisdiction,” a “blatant injustice,” riddled with “partisanship, arbitrariness, abuses and bad faith”: prosecutors don’t mince words when it comes to the Collège Notre-Dame’s decision to evict a 5th grader Exclude secondary education.
The story begins last February in a bar on Saint-Laurent Boulevard in Montreal.
It is, according to the lawsuit, a “discotheque frequented by several minors because its porters do not systematically ask for identification documents from their customers, especially when it comes to young girls who are well dressed according to clothing trends and fashion are”.
During the evening, the teenager recognizes a teacher at her college who is dancing.
“She thinks it’s funny meeting a college teacher at a disco” and agrees to film him for a few seconds while she’s “influenced by alcohol.”
The video sequence only shows “the teacher engaged in a public activity, in this case dancing”, “in a public place, in this case a nightclub dance floor”.
The man “appears amid a crowd, who are also dancing […] and it does not perform or appear to have inappropriate or sexual connotations,” the lawsuit reads.
The student sends the video to friends through the Instagram application’s private messaging system, “far from suspecting that some of the nine friends who received it[e] spread it widely and post it on social media, not to mention the video would go viral among college students.
A “gross violation” of the Code of Life
A few days later it starts. The student is picked up by management and his mobile phone is confiscated. According to the public prosecutor’s office, she was “held against her will for several hours and subjected to inquisitorial interrogations without justification”.
Less than a week after the night out at the bar, her parents are called to college, where they are told that their daughter has been expelled for a gross violation of the institution’s code of life and a breach of the school contract. conditional admission to which the student subscribed in June 2022 after other violations of the code of life.
The parents then tried to enroll their daughter in two private institutions in Montreal and in a public school in Outremont, which they declined due to lack of space.
She “therefore runs the risk” of “having to complete her high school diploma in the “public” and seeing her efforts of the last four years undone,” says the lawsuit, which also claims the quality of education at her high school in the district is “in no way comparable to that of the College”.
The parents believe Collège Notre-Dame wanted their daughter to be “an example to the student community” and are seeking $215,000 in damages on their daughter’s behalf and her own.
They also asked the court to stay their daughter’s deportation. However, since the lawsuit was filed, Notre-Dame College has agreed to reinstate its student.
“We have settled the restraining order aspect amicably [dimanche]. The child has been reinstated and has been following his classes without admission since Monday, regarding the merits challenge,” the parents’ lawyer, Me Daniel Pellerin, explained to La Presse.
Despite this agreement, the court has yet to decide the merits of the lawsuit and the question of the damages claimed.
Notre-Dame College declined to comment on the case because the student was underage.
A “particularly disproportionate” sanction
Pierre Trudel, a professor at the Research Center for Public Law at the University of Montreal, read out the lawsuit at La Presse’s request.
The question arises as to how far the school’s disciplinary measures go in the case of an extracurricular activity, and this will probably have to be examined by the court when it comes to the judge. Is there a sufficient connection?
Pierre Trudel, Professor at the Public Law Research Center at the University of Montreal
Mr Trudel notes that the connection in this case is “a little tenuous”.
Prosecutors say the student’s dismissal is “disproportionate to the alleged facts.” Professor Pierre Trudel also considers the “punishment to be particularly disproportionate and harsh”.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE
Professor at the Research Center for Public Law at the University of Montreal Pierre Trudel
“I’m in university. In general, it takes more than that to deserve such a severe sanction,” says Mr. Trudel.
And basically, did the teenager have the right to film a man dancing in the middle of the night?
The professor refers to the famous Duclos case that went as far as the Canadian Supreme Court.
“In 1998 the Court ruled that you cannot publish a person’s picture without their consent unless there was a reason in the public interest,” he explains. But there are nuances: there are several “degrees of public interest,” says the professor, and the person must also be “clearly recognizable.”
Making a video “of a crowd on a dance floor without targeting an individual is legal, it’s nothing illegal,” continues Mr. Trudel, who has not seen the video in question.
As social media is increasingly becoming an extension of schools, this is an “interesting case,” the law professor concludes.
With the collaboration of Louis-Samuel Perron, La Presse