KITCHENER -- Wilfrid Laurier University's Faculty of Social Work plans to take down gates that were recently installed in front of their building.
In a tweet, officials said the decision was made "based on many important concerns raised by our community."
They expect the gates to be down by the end of Friday.
Jessica Hutchison, a PhD student in the faculty, told CTV Kitchener on Thursday that she saw the gates had gone up after someone posted a photo on social media last weekend.
"Our mandate is to support and advocate for those who are most marginalized in our community and by putting up punitive measures such as hostile architecture like a fence with spikes on the top of it we're actually indicating to those who we're supposed to be supporting and advocating for that they are not welcome, that they are not valued and that they are not worthy of connection with us," she said in an interview on Thursday.
She said there was no consultation before the gates were added to the building.
"Our automatic response in our society is just to exclude people, to separate them, to push the issue away rather than engaging people in conversation and dialogue and relationship-building," Hutchison said. "Putting up fences seems to be the easy solution, but we are a university, we are a faculty of social work. We're supposed to be engaging in these really challenging and complex issues together with our community."
On Tuesday, the faculty sent out a tweet saying the gates were added in "response to safety concerns raised after COVID caused students and faculty to work remotely."
While Hutchison had never experienced any issues with people sheltering outside, she said the Faculty of Social Work out of any university department would be "well-equipped to deal with it."
She said she wants to start a process to repair the harm that's been done and develop a comprehensive strategy to work with their neighbours.
"We are in downtown Kitchener and we have the opportunity to engage with a whole bunch of different social service agencies and the folks who are experiencing homelessness, people who are using drugs, so we need to work together on a really strong relationship-building process," Hutchison said.
Hutchison had planned a demonstration at the gates on Saturday afternoon. Beyond having the gates removed, she hoped to start making reparations and working on that relationship-building.
With files from CTV News Kitchener's Chase Banger
