Smokin’ in the dorm room

>> Concordia evicts three frosh for breaking house rules, but the Régie says the university may have broken some themselves

HUSTLED OUT OF HOME: Mir Hasan Masood (L) and Ryan Choudhuri

by SAMER ELATRASH

In what could be the first case of its kind, three Concordia students say they will sue the university for evicting them from a university residence without a decision from the Régie du logement.

The three students, Mir Hasan Masood, Ryan Choudhuri and Mir Ahmed Mansoor, all freshman who moved to Montreal at the beginning of the year, were evicted late last month from the dorms at Concordia’s Loyola campus after the university accused them of violating their contract by smoking and vandalizing a hallway. The students say they smoked in their rooms, but stopped after receiving a reprimand, and the vandalism accusation, over a wall that was damaged when two of the students were roughhousing in a hallway, was unfair.

The students say they were not given enough notice for a meeting to discuss their evictions, which they missed. When told of the impending evictions, they contacted a student union advocate and the Régie du logement, who assured them that the university had no right to evict a tenant without a decision from the Régie.

“The Régie told us, ‘They can’t evict you.’ They said, ‘Call the police if they come to evict you,’” says Masood, who now lives with Choudhuri in an apartment in Mile-End. The students took the Régie’s advice when four Concordia security guards showed up at their rooms and asked them to leave. “We called the police and two officers came. They spoke with [a residence official] for 20 minutes, then came up and told us we had to go. They said that as long as our rooms didn’t have washrooms, the Régie rules didn’t apply.”

A police officer from Station 11 says he was not aware of the incident, but, “Usually [landlords] have to pass by the Régie first.”

The Quebec Civil code makes no exception for a university residence aside from mentioning that tenants have to be full-time students and that students may be relocated to another room. “Universities have separate clauses,” says Régie spokesman Jean-Pierre Le Blanc. “But it’s still a contract, and to end it, they have to come to the Régie.”

“The police should have stopped it because the eviction was not done legally with the right procedures,” says Le Blanc.

Concordia, which refused to back down last week after receiving a letter from the students’ lawyer, says it has the right to evict students who violated their contract. “We believe we are within our rights,” says Concordia lawyer Pierre Frégeau. “In a university setting, there is a given policy and a standards contract. This is an exceptional circumstance.”

“We didn’t do it on a whim,” adds Concordia residence associate director Giuliana Panetta. “We try our best to be as fair as possible and we gave them many chances.”

Panetta says university representatives were told by the Régie last year that they could evict students if they signed guidelines on conduct in the residence. However, Le Blanc says Concordia misunderstood what they heard from the Régie officer.

“Yes, he said you could evict the tenant, but [Concordia] missed the part about coming to the Régie first,” he says.

Only full-time freshmen are eligible to lease rooms in Concordia’s dorms, and leases last for the academic year. The students say they will press on with a lawsuit after Concordia’s response to their lawyer’s letter and will ask that the university compensate them for rent they paid after they were evicted.