The student requested that the Human Rights Tribunal of B.C. consider if the unlawful expulsion was for reasons prohibited under the B.C. Human Rights legislation, specifically disability and religion.  (The case was dismissed so the reason is still unknown.)

In their Response to the Human Rights Tribunal, Langara College, through their lawyer at Heenan Blaikie, wrote February 9, 2009:

One of the named respondents to the Human Rights action, Ruth Lamb (RN) of the Langara College administration, wrote to the College of Registered Nurses of B.C. approximately six weeks earlier on December 17, 2008:

The Health Profession Review Board considered the conduct of a Registered Nurse (RN) and the prior investigation of her conduct by The College of Registered Nurses of British Columbia which concluded that she had not breach professional standards.

My daughter’s Program consisted of four one week long residential retreats of about fifty people including staff and other students.

These were in Oct 2006, February 2007, April 2007 and June 2007. She was expelled without prior knowledge that she was under disciplinary review in May 2007.

What the RN wrote:

What the RN did:

Despite her statements, the RN attended the third retreat approximately two months later with my daughter and thus if the RN’s written statements were sincere then she knowingly, at least in her own mind, placed not only herself but approximately 50 other staff and students in mortal risk.

The surprising content of the HPRB decision:

In contradiction to the RN’s own written statements an HPRB panel: Thomas English, Q.C., Chair,  Helen del Val and Michael Morris wrote in their March 17, 2010 decision wrote:

Further, there was no mention by the HPRB panel of the RN attending the third retreat.

What is to be concluded about the performance and conduct of the panel members? Are they grossly negligent or is their statement a fabrication? Are there other possibilities?

Their duty includes making decisions that directly affect public safety. Are they fulfilling their duty?

My submission to the Anti bullying site wewerebullied.tumblr.com –

Christy Clark, in my opinion, is a hypocrite when it comes to bullying.
ID, punish bullies, Clark says. Well let me ID Christy Clark as someone who will not take action against bullies, despite what she says!

Our case involves instructors, in a public institution ( Langara College). Instructors bullied my daughter. When we met with the director of the program, Ruth Lamb (RN) to try to address the problem, she retaliated using serious and malicious accusations against my daughter. The very bureaucracies who are put in place to monitor professional behavior turned a blind eye to the malicious behavior of the instructors even though the instructors behavior was not even in line with Langara College’s own policies and procedures, and was well documented. Even the Dean of Continuing Studies, Doug Soo (social worker), acted outside Langara College’s policies and procedures to attack my daughter and protect the actions of the instructors. That is clearly very unprofessional, but apparently acceptable, behavior!!!!

Details of our story can be read on www.standupforstudents.com

When we finally tried to get the Premiere – Christy Clark – to look into the matter of the bullying, and malicious and damaging behavior of public employees in public institutions, and the lack of action from the very bureaucracies that are there to protect people from this malicious behavior, her response was ” I am not able to intervene in specific cases”.
Had this been a school yard dispute between students her response may have been appropriate. When you have a whole government/ public system that is bullying, and supportive of peers bullying, then it is exactly her (the Premiere’s) role to intervene, that is if she really cares about the problem of bullying.

This is why, in my opinion, Christy Clark is a hypocrite when it comes to her speaking out against bullying in B.C.
She is clearly happy to be an observer / cheerleader from the sidelines.
Christy Clark, actions speak louder than words!!!

Barb Collin. Vancouver B.C.

Really Christy? Are you seriously thinking women will vote for you?

Celia left a comment on the following article:

When Bullying Backfires: Asperger’s Student Voted Homecoming Princess

I was in a classroom once that had a poster that said “Stand up for what is right, even if you are standing alone.” It touched my heart and strengthened my resolve. Holocasut survivor Eli Wiesel said “There are times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time we fail to protest.” These are my mottos. It is not easy to stand up against bullies, against injustice, against prejudice, against intolerence. Yet we must do it, again and again, no matter how difficult. Bless these students and this community for standing up together,

April 17, 2012

To Mr. Doug Soo,

As the Denmark shooter and killer of many youth, Anders Behring Breivik, goes to trial I wanted to share how this and other sniper / shooting events traumatize myself over and over again because of your arrogance, lack of any common sense and lack of due diligence with regards to your treatment of my daughter.

I am the mother of S.W. She is the student who you wrote the appalling affidavit against ( in 2009) saying that you believed she was a danger to herself and others – a sniper risk ( copy enclosed). Your attempt to distract from my daughters complaint about interpersonal conflicts between her and some of her instructors ( bullying), by writing this distortion / misrepresentation of her, was so irresponsible.

Being a health care professional myself I know that if you truly believed the CRAP that you put in the affidavit that 1. You had a responsibility, as a health care professional yourself, to get appropriate support / help / an assessment of / for my daughter and 2. The police should have been notified. It should have not have been our family having to contact the police to protect my daughter against your dangerous accusations! You know what, the bottom line is that either you thought that my daughter was at risk and your actions were WRONG, or you knew that my daughter posed no risk at all and your actions were WRONG! How do you justify your actions against her? Is this what you do with every student that challenges the College – I think yes!

I can=t imagine you believing a word of what you wrote, so why expose a family to that trauma and abuse. We are people and we do have emotions. Are you that callous, or just feel untouchable, to be able to write such awful things about a intelligent, and good student/ woman ?

Those disturbing, malicious, destructive, unfounded accusations you made against my daughter have no place coming from someone in your position, and in turn you have no place being in the position of authority you are in – Dean of Continuing Studies at Langara College in Vancouver B.C. if you can negligently make such unfounded accusations of an innocent student. I have to wonder what standards Langara College has for their staff. From some stories I have heard in the community the standards of instructors at Langara College are not always what you would hope they would be.

Those students, under you watch, are vulnerable and should not even have a chance of being subjected to your flippant and laissez faire attitude which in our case traumatized this family and ended my daughter=s education – shame on you! Shouldn=t you be promoting, encouraging and supporting education, critical thinking, and the achievements of your students instead of crucifying them at your whim?

Have no doubt that I take every opportunity to share with others what you did to my daughter, either in conversation or through my web site www.standupforstudents.com. It is what
I need to do to deal with the trauma that YOU have put me / the family through.

My efforts to get our story out are hampered by my busy life.

I worked very hard to raise responsible children, and I will work even harder to expose the abuse that exists at Langara College.

I will continue to tell our story in hopes of helping other students, who are subjected to the abuse of instructors / administrators at the College level, not feel so alone, and know that the abuse they may experience is not their fault.

Sincerely,

Barbara L. Collin

cc Langara College Board of Director ( registered letter)
CBC Go Public BC ( via e-mail)
Naomi Yamamoto – (Minister of Advanced Education) via e-mail
Christie Clark ( Premiere of B.C.)via e-mail
Michelle Mungall ( NDP Minister of Advanced Education critic)via e-mail
Keith Baldry (Global TV=s political correspondent )via e-mail

I recently read the best article on Teachers that Bully Students. The Article is called  Teachers Who Bully Students: Patterns and Policy Implications  (click here to download) by Alan McEvoy, Ph.D.

Alan McEvoy has such great insight.  I feel that his article could have been written about our experience with Langara College.

What has been your experience?

Bullying “is psychological violence”. (Pg.3)

“Targets….are blessed/cursed with a strong work ethic” (Pg.23)

Bullies “serve to shame, humiliate, and treat the Target like a powerless person”.(Pg.27)

(The above quotes were taken from The Bully at Work by Dr. Gary Namie, and Dr. Ruth Namie. Published in 2009 by Sourcebooks, Inc.)

Bullies ruin lives.

Bullying costs money ( I am curious as to how many hundreds of thousands of dollars Langara College spent on lawyer fees on our case alone trying to deflect and dismiss our attempts to get to get accountability for the irresponsible actions of the Langara College staff. Money that should have gone into education not recrimination).

Our story starts in May 2007 and over the next 4 ½ years we navigated a complacent system with responses to our concerns ranging from apathy and disinterest, to paper shuffling deflect and dismiss approaches, to hostility.

Bullying still seems to be a subjective matter. There are no laws against it in B.C. Even if there were would they be enforced?

We found that policies, procedures and Standards of Practise appeared to be ignored.  Complacency in BC authorities is pervasive.

Some of the bureaucracies we approached/ presented our situation to included;

Langara College administration

The Human Rights Tribunal

The College of Registered Nurses of BC

The Health Professions Review Board

The Ministry of Advanced. Education

The Ministry Of Health

The B.C. Premier – Christy Clark

The Ombudsman

We are going to share our experiences with these bureaucracies, that should be regulating and maintaining standards, and appear to be failing in these responsibilities.

The most serious allegation against my daughter was that she, “threatened any person, or communicated plans to do so, and created a situation which endangered the health, safety or well-being of another person”.  My understanding is that making such a threat is an offence under the Criminal Code of Canada.

I contacted the police with the details of the allegations made by Langara College staff against my daughter for HER protection.

The instructor that made that particular allegation (based on information from a previous retreat) attended the third retreat with my daughter, interacted with her during the course of the retreat, but neither mentioned anything about an investigation to her nor took any action to protect others from the threat that she alleged my daugther to be.

I will soon be posting the unauthorized dismissal letter signed by Langara College program manager, Ruth Lamb, as well as Doug Soo’s affidavit.