Adam Feibel
The Fulcrum
Trigger warning: graphic descriptions of sexual violence
UPDATE, March 2: Pat Marquis and Alexandre Larochelle have resigned from their elected positions. See The Fulcrum for the latest news on this story.
The sexually violent conversation about the University of Ottawa’s student federation president that took place between five men, including four elected student representatives, has been published on the blog bellejar.ca
OTTAWA (CUP) — The sexually violent conversation about the University of Ottawa’s student federation president that took place between five men, including four elected student representatives, has been published online.
The contents of the group conversation on Facebook were shown to board members of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) at the Board of Administration’s (BOA) most recent meeting on Feb. 23.
The conversation consists of SFUO vp social Pat Marquis, BOA representative Alexandre Giroux, federated body executives Alex Larochelle and Michel Fournier-Simard and student Bart Tremblay, who holds no elected position.
Now made public on the website Bellejar.ca, the conversation has brought about demands from students for the elected student officials to resign from their posts.
The leaked documents include screenshots with English translations, as about half the conversation takes place in French.
It begins with Tremblay, who writes that the “president will suck me off in her office chair and after I will fuck her in the ass on Pat‘s desk.” He then clarifies that this is in reference to SFUO president Anne-Marie Roy.
“Someone punish her with their shaft,” Larochelle, vp social for the Criminology Students’ Association, writes in English.
The conversation turns to doubts about Roy’s city of origin, before Giroux remarks that “if you fuck Anne-Marie, I will definitely buy you a beer.” Marquis says he’ll “get a 24 for Bart if he does it.”
The leak comes nearly a week after the documents were shown at the BOA meeting, at which the men, with the exception of Marquis, informed those present that they were considering legal action against Roy for bringing the private conversation to the board’s attention.
Marquis and Larochelle have been in talks with Roy to cooperate and try to settle the matter without taking any further action.
On Facebook, a page has surfaced to rally students and demand the resignation of the four men who serve as elected student officials.
“These men, who represents [sic] us as undergraduate students, have participated in a conversation in which they planned (apparently in jest) the sexual assault of SFUO President Anne-Marie Roy,” the page reads. “Our disgust is all the more profound because this is not the first time that we have had to condemn Marquis for his despicable and oppressive behaviour.”
The last line is likely in reference to Marquis’ comments about the aboriginal community last year. In March 2013, while he was the vp social for the Engineering Students’ Society and had been elected to his current post as vp social of the SFUO, Marquis listed the location of an event as being on “ceded and surrendered Algonquin territory,” in response to an SFUO event with the opposite description.
The Indigenous and Canadian Studies Students’ Association (ICSSA) reached an agreement with Marquis to work toward “accountability, responsibility, and respect” rather than resign. Now the group says it’s had enough.
“He has failed our agreement. He has failed all students. We can no longer trust him,” reads a statement from the ICSSA.
Reached for comment, Marquis said he’s aware of the leaked documents but has not made a decision on whether he will resign.
“My comment in that situation was about congratulating a friend about whether he would be able to seduce someone else,” he said Friday. “It was never about sexual assault. It was never about taking advantage of women.”
The manner in which the documents were originally obtained has not been revealed.
