Students at McGill University in Montreal are petitioning to bring a convicted murderer and sexual abuser back to campus, and their reasoning is exactly as deranged as you’d expect. Jeffrey George Ewert, now in his 60s, strangled a woman to death in British Columbia in 1984. Six weeks later, he beat and choked a 15-year-old girl, paralyzing her for life. He was convicted of second-degree murder and attempted murder for those attacks.
Canada, in its infinite wisdom, granted Ewert day parole in 2025, despite his risk of reoffending being judged as moderate to high by the parole board. Since August he has been living in a halfway house and attending McGill, one of Canada’s most prestigious universities, pursuing a law degree and a master’s in social work. That last part is a punchline that writes itself.
In October, after students said they felt unsafe around him and felt betrayed that the school hadn’t disclosed his violent past, McGill took what it called “measured, decisive action” and banned Ewert from campus. Reasonable, right? Not according to McGill University campus ban controversy. The woke brigade immediately fired up a petition demanding he be allowed back, arguing the ban is racist because Ewert is Indigenous.
“We are asking that Jeff be given the chance to do what the rest of us are doing, which is to attend class and learn,” the petition read. A ban from the premises, with no conversation beforehand and no finding of misconduct, takes that chance away.” The McGill Law Students’ Association even sent a formal email to the university saying the ban “undermines” Ewert’s rehabilitation and that it was “especially disappointing” when McGill failed to offer a “critical learning” moment. Yes, the critical learning moment they wanted was apparently coexisting with a high-risk offender who has already violated his parole conditions multiple times, including conditions specifically related to his contacts with women.
Student Raymond Johnson-Brown, who is also pursuing a master’s in social work, said that while women might feel uncomfortable sitting near a murderer and sexual abuser, “discomfort is not the same as a lack of safety.” Johnson-Brown also said, “I personally don’t see somebody who has committed a crime, served [decades in prison] and is now out on day parole as impacting me or my well-being.” Worth pointing out that Johnson-Brown is not a woman, and Ewert’s victims were.
Petition co-author Annica Dickens added that “public discomfort should not, on its own, be treated as proof that someone poses a threat,” while acknowledging his “past is serious.” The petition also argued that Ewert’s time in prison was “inextricable from the colonial institutions in which he was born” and that his upbringing “marked by abuse, neglect, and racism” should factor into how people view the murder he committed.
McGill Provost Angela Campbell said the university would conduct “a fair process that balances the rights and interests of everyone involved” and noted that “a past conviction does not on its own bar anyone from studying here.” So the school is already wobbling. These are the same students who want to abolish prisons, and yet here they are, furious that a high-risk convicted killer had to stay off their campus for five minutes. The petition is still circulating, McGill is still reviewing the matter, and the women on that campus are presumably just supposed to manage their “discomfort” on their own.
