HALIFAX — Dalhousie University has suspended 13 dentistry students from clinical activities over misogynistic comments that were allegedly posted on a social media site, saying it wants to ensure the safety of patients and classmates.
The university president and the dean of the dentistry school announced Monday that the fourth-year students will have their clinical privileges taken away while the matter is under review.
"The comments made in the Facebook group by some of our fourth-year male dentistry students were deeply offensive, degrading to women and entirely unacceptable. This behaviour will not be tolerated at Dalhousie University," president Richard Florizone told a news conference.
"As previously stated, Dal and the faculty of dentistry are committed to significant consequences to fully address the situation. However, those consequences must follow a just process, a process which is consistent with the law, with university policy and which holds the rights of all of those involved in this incident."
The announcement comes after four professors at the Halifax university filed a complaint over allegations that male students posted sexually hateful messages about their female classmates on a Facebook group page.
The university launched a restorative justice process last month after an unspecified number of women filed a complaint under the university's sexual harassment policy and chose to proceed with the process. The process is an informal and confidential resolution procedure that includes the parties involved.
The school said it is continuing with that, as well as looking at ways to "address the broader harm caused by this incident."
Florizone said the decision to suspend the clinical privileges was made on Dec. 22. He said the university waited two weeks to make it public after it heard reports that the male students allegedly involved were at risk of harming themselves and the school wanted to ensure that appropriate supports were available to them.
"We had credible reports from our frontline staff of potential self-harm," he said. "We took those seriously and so that concern for student safety overrode our concern about communicating this publicly."
The university said the suspension will allow the Faculty of Dentistry Academic Standards Class Committee to consider the case from the perspective of professionalism requirements. It said the committee can develop remediation plans and recommend academic dismissal.
The students cannot receive a dentistry degree from Dalhousie University without meeting academic requirements, which includes professional standards.
The school said it will decide this week whether fourth-year dentistry classes will resume next Monday.
According to the CBC, members of the Class of DDS Gentlemen page on Facebook voted on which woman they'd like to have "hate" sex with and joked about using chloroform on women.
In another post, a woman is shown in a bikini with a caption that says, "Bang until stress is relieved or unconscious (girl)."
In the statement, the university said the comments "expressed on the Facebook postings were deeply offensive, and completely unacceptable to all of us at Dalhousie University."
