UNB student may be kicked out of residence

Andrew Meade / The Brunswickan  

Chris Ian’s future in residence at the University of New Brunswick is unclear.

Ian, a graduate student and current resident of McLeod House, played a role in the fire that occurred in his residence on Nov. 17. The incident accumulated $25,000 in damages and was deemed an accident by emergency
response authorities.

Though the incident occurred close to two months ago, problems are still ongoing between Ian and UNB Residential
Life. Recently, Residential Life made the decision to evict Ian from the residence community, a decision Ian
will be appealing this week.

Shortly after the incident, Ian said he met with Angela Garnett, director of Residential Life for the university. Ian said that Garnett told him Residential Life had evaluated the reports from the police and fire department that deemed the fire an accident, but some action still had to occur from the incident.

“Near the end [of the conversation] she said, ‘But we’re going to move you.’ And I asked why and she told me that it was due to my shaky relationship with the proctors and the don of McLeod House, the fact that there needed to be “consequences” for my role in the fire, as well as the fact that the proctors had apparently gauged the mood of the house and determined that there were ‘feelings of lingering hostility’ towards myself and my role in the fire,” he said.

Ian was initially supposed to be moved to the suite style residence shortly following the incident, however his family requested that he move in January.

Both James Brown, executive director of Residential Life and Conference Services, and Ian confirmed that proctors from McLeod House submitted statements about “feelings of lingering hostility” within the residence. Both parties also said that the don of McLeod House approached Residential Life and claimed that Ian showed
no true remorse for the fire, a claim that Ian disputes wholeheartedly.

“I told [the don of McLeod] specifically in that interview that I felt terrible about the fire and these are my
words literally, about having disrupted peoples well-being, about having possibly destroyed many of my friends’ as well as other peoples property,” he said.

“I also mention, against my better judgement, that I have not been sleeping well since the incident, and when I heard [the don’s comment] the response was ‘How can anybody say that about another person?’” Brown said that though Ian has accumulated several fines in residence, it is extremely rare for a resident to be evicted on these grounds alone and that Ian’s eviction revolves centrally around the fire.

“I believe that the appeal of his eviction will be completely sorted out by Thursday and he’ll either move, you know we may still leave that open to him actually or we will change the locks and he will be evicted,” Brown said.

Ian’s fate in residence will be decided at an appeal on Thursday.