The Globe and Mail reported this week that the Crown has approved charges (VPD) to be laid by the Vancouver Police Department against a UBC student, Camille Cacnio, who appeared from video footage and from an apparent confession to have participated in the Stanley Cup riot early this past summer. 

Cacnio was caught on camera during the riot and her misdeeds were profiled in many of the name n’ shame website and social media chatter that cropped up with vigilante vengeance shortly thereafter.   She ultimately responded by purportedly posting a half-apologetic, half-accusatory confession online. 

Cacnio is not the first University of British Columbia (UBC) student (The Ubyssey) to be charged in connection with the riot, and she will probably not be the last.  Despite getting some heat from donors and members of the public, UBC has been steadfast in affirming that it is not the university’s place to discipline students like Cacnio.  According to Randy Schmidt, associate director of UBC Public Affairs, as reported in The Ubyssey:

While the university believes all persons involved should be called upon to account for their behaviour, it does not believe the student discipline system at the university is the appropriate forum to do so… The system of student discipline at the university is meant to address offences specifically committed against members and property of the university community.

This is the correct approach, for many reasons.  Here is more information on this issue (University Affairs). 

Similar pressure was applied to UBC over the past couple of years in relation to Sasan Ansari (Vancouver Sun), a West Vancouver man who stabbed a friend to death outside the Hollyburn Country Club in November 2008.  The court considered Ansari to have committed the killing while in a “dissociative state”.  He was released on parole last January and returned to taking courses at the UBC law faculty this past September.

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