Editor’s Note: Letters to the editor in response to this article were published on March 11 and March 12, respectively. On March 7, the Canadian Association of Journalists issued a statement regarding the RCMP’s conduct in relation to this story.
Nathan Herrington’s February 14 began with him making his way to campus earlier than usual.
Herrington, an international student recruiter and advisor working for UBC, was on his way to a meeting in the AMS Nest. He’s responsible for making campus tours happen, which includes being alert to what’s going on around the university.
That particular morning, the UBC Aquatic Centre was hosting the swimming portion of the Invictus Games — an international sports competition for wounded military veterans founded by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, in 2014. Between February 8 and 16, over 550 athletes from 25 countries participated in 11 adaptive sporting events, according to organizers.
The participation of Israeli athletes drew considerable opposition from campus groups concerned with Palestinian human rights, and a petition with over 1,000 signatures was delivered to university administration on February 3, demanding UBC reverse course on hosting the competition. For the week preceding the games, the area around the Aquatic Centre was marked by a significant police presence that exceeded the resources deployed to the university during the Palestinian solidarity encampment in the summer of 2024.
Since campus tour participants frequently want to know if they can enter the Aquatic Centre, Herrington said he also walked in, at the direction of his supervisor, on Thursday, February 13, to take photos — doing so resulted in a brief interaction with police who wanted to know what he was doing.
On Wednesday, February 12, RCMP officers came to The Ubyssey’s office seeking contact information for sources in a previous story, who they anticipated might stage a demonstration. The Ubyssey did not provide contact information; journalism ethics require journalists to refrain from assisting police unless our cooperation is strictly necessary in extreme situations.
By the time the games were underway on Friday, several RCMP vans, trucks and SUVs, helicopters and drones were all part of the policing apparatus.
This securitized scene was exactly what Herrington’s meeting in the Nest was supposed to be about. In an interview, Herrington told The Ubyssey he was on his way to advise a colleague about what potential disruptions the Invictus Games might pose to campus tours. So, as he walked from the bus and toward the Nest the morning of February 14 he decided to pull out his phone and record what was going on.
He was also wearing a keffiyeh.
“I was aware that me wearing a keffiyeh and filming would bring attention to [me],” he said in an interview with The Ubyssey. “But again, I was doing something that I do all the time, which is walk by the bus loop wearing a keffiyeh or filming things that are happening on campus for my job.”
Around 8:30 a.m., after Herrington had walked past the Aquatic Centre and begun walking adjacent to the Life Building toward the Nest, he was stopped by three RCMP officers who he said informed him he was being detained for mischief.
In the early hours of February 14, the Aquatic Centre was vandalized with red paint and spray-painted messages chastising the games and the university for hosting “war criminals” — according to a video posted to @peoplesuniversityubc, an Instagram account associated with the Palestinian solidarity movement on campus. The account reported in the post’s caption that the video was an “anonymous submission,” and no group or person has taken credit for the defacing. By the time Herrington arrived for work hours later, most of the vandalism appeared to have already been cleaned up.
The Ubyssey stationed reporters outside the Aquatic Centre beginning at 7:30 a.m. to observe policing and any demonstrations, and responded within seconds of noticing Herrington being stopped by beginning recording from multiple cameras.
RCMP put Herrington into handcuffs. “Can you please tell me why I’m being detained?” Herrington asked officers as he stood while they reviewed his identity documents. They didn’t answer.
Police then started bringing Herrington to a RCMP van parked on the sidewalk on the Aquatic Centre’s east side. While he was being walked over, Herrington addressed passersby coming into campus.
“For anyone who’s wondering, I’m a UBC staff member. I was walking by the UBC Aquatic Centre wearing a keffiyeh, and I’ve been detained for mischief.”
As he began speaking, a second officer following from behind walked up to take hold of Herrington’s other arm.
He continued. “I said nothing. I walked by police officers, and have been detained for mischief. I’m a UBC staff member and alumni. I arrived to campus to go to work and I’ve been detained for mischief for wearing a keffiyeh,” Herrington shouted.
Herrington told The Ubyssey that after he was seated in the back of the van, police asked him a series of yes-or-no questions, which he cannot precisely recall — but he does recall being asked if he wanted the representation of a lawyer, which he responded to in the affirmative.
But Herrington never spoke to one. Instead, he spent about 35 minutes alone in the back of the van. At one point, Herrington said officers opened the door and asked him to reveal the bottom of his boots. Following their request, he raised one leg at a time from a sedentary and handcuffed position.
Police didn’t say anything and closed the door again, according to Herrington. He said when he was eventually told to exit the van a few minutes later and after the handcuffs were removed, police told him that they had seen red paint on the bottom of his boots — but didn’t specify when.
“They provided no indication of how it got onto my shoes,” Herrington said. Even then, he said he did not understand the reason for his detention. Shortly after, police said he was free to go.
Herrington approached The Ubyssey shortly after being released and showed the bottom of his right boot, where red paint was visible. In a later interview, Herrington said “the only moment” he can imagine he would have stepped in paint was when he was being taken to the RCMP’s van, where there was paint on the ground immediately outside.
Photos from that day lend support to Herrington’s hypothesis. The Ubyssey’s cameras captured Herrington’s right boot with the sole lifted as he was being taken by police — the same boot with red paint photographed after his release — as well as distinct patches of red paint concentrated on the ground near the rear entrance to the van, where Herrington entered. The initial photo of his boot shows no red paint.
The RCMP declined to answer questions about the specifics around Herrington’s detention.
“I can confirm that on February 14, 2025, an individual was detained by the RCMP at the University of British Columbia Vancouver campus, for an investigation that began earlier that morning,” RCMP Sergeant Vanessa Munn said in a statement to The Ubyssey.
“That individual was released without process, meaning no charges were laid. As a general practice, we cannot identify any individual nor release details for which they were detained until such time that charges are officially laid. The investigation into that matter is ongoing.”
Many of the officers present that day were from the RCMP’s Critical Response Unit, formerly the Community-Industry Response Group, which currently faces a systemic investigation from the RCMP’s Civilian Review and Complaints Commission. In just the past month, it was forced to apologize to journalists for its “serious interference” in freedom of the press, and the BC Supreme Court found the “extremely serious” and “racist” conduct of its officers violated the Charter rights of several Indigenous land defenders.
Joey Hansen, executive director of the Association of Administrative and Professional Staff (AAPS) — the labour association that represents UBC employees like Herrington — described the incident as “frustrating” when speaking to The Ubyssey.
“Staff, students and faculty have a right to work and learn in an environment free from police harassment and it's not clear that everybody at UBC got to enjoy that,” Hansen said.
In the fall, AAPS passed a motion that committed the organization to advocating to end “UBC’s complicity in human rights violations,” including “the ongoing bombardment of Palestine and Lebanon.” The same motion also called for an “elimination of policing and excessive surveillance of UBC community members” at demonstrations related to divestment and Palestinian human rights, and advocated instead for “meaningful engagement with student, faculty, and staff demands” from UBC leadership.
AAPS has contacted UBC to express concern about Herrington’s detention, and Hansen said the university was “very responsive” and “very open to having a [further] conversation.”
While AAPS’ investigation into the incident is ongoing, Hansen said the association has not ruled out assisting Herrington in bringing a lawsuit against the RCMP.
“AAPS, including our president, had met with the university before the Invictus Games and we had asked the university to communicate to the RCMP the importance of not overreacting to things and remembering that people have rights, and it seems like the RCMP ignored that,” Hansen said.
UBC Media Relations Director of University Affairs Matthew Ramsey would not confirm when asked directly if the university ever followed through on AAPS’ request. He also declined to comment on the detention in general, saying the university is “restricted by law from commenting on specific employee matters” and referred The Ubyssey to RCMP.
Margot Young, a professor of law at UBC, said the details The Ubyssey shared with her ring several constitutional alarm bells and suggest Herrington’s detention was “not Charter-compliant.”
Everything police can do with their expansive powers is bound by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. When police arrest or detain people, Young explained, they are engaging a number of freedoms, including those detailed in four sections: section 8, the right against unreasonable search and seizure; section 9, the right against arbitrary detention; section 10(a), the right to be informed of the reasons for arrest or detention; and section 10(b), the right to counsel.
In Herrington’s case, Young expressed concern specifically that he was not put in contact with a lawyer “without delay” upon request — potentially contrary to his constitutional guarantee that is subject to only strict exemptions.
“The courts have been very clear the right to talk to counsel requires immediate efforts by police to make that possible. You can’t leave someone for 35 minutes without giving them access to counsel unless it’s impossible to get them to a confidential phone,” Young said.
Police also need a non-arbitrary justification in order to detain someone, Young said, adding that what courts have interpreted as arbitrary includes detentions based on a person’s race or what they are wearing, if what they are wearing is unrelated to a crime.
Young said that if the police had seen red paint on his boot before, that might have justified the detention.
“If the reason is simply that he looks suspicious because of what he’s wearing and that he was filming, that’s an arbitrary detention, and you cannot detain anyone arbitrarily. That’s illegal, that’s contrary to the constitution.”
“Wearing a [keffiyeh] and filming is not a reason to detain somebody,” Young said.
Herrington’s keffiyeh is deeply personal to him. A Canadian by nationality, he was born in Dubai, living there many years and attending high school in Saudi Arabia. When he was 15, his family did a day trip from Jordan to Israel and Palestine, where he said he also visited the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“It was a very impactful experience for me as a kid,” Herrington said. “It wasn’t until reflecting on it years and years later that I could really sort of pinpoint what I was really seeing.” He said he remembers seeing “the walls” and how “Bethlehem looked like a military base.”
“I had all these clues as a kid of like, ‘what’s going on here?’ but I don’t think I ever caught the picture.”
After that day trip, Herrington said his family was in Petra, an ancient city in southwestern Jordan, where his father began a conversation with the store’s owner that turned into the family spending the whole evening there.
“I was chatting with the son of the store owner, who was a couple of years older than me…he went into the back of the store and brought out this scarf, and I had recognized it, given that I had grown up in the Middle East. It's a common thing to see people wearing, but there's different types — obviously from every region — of keffiyehs. And this one was unique for sure,” Herrington said.
Herrington said he didn’t know what it meant at the time, but now, his journey of reflecting on appropriation, learning and complex ideas of place and home is embodied in the choice that he makes to “wear it every day as a symbol of resistance, as a symbol of resilience, as a symbol of connected struggle for liberation.”
“I'm not Muslim, I'm not Arab, I'm not Palestinian. But I know that it's important for me to hold on to the parts of me that feel really connected to that part of the world and to the people that have impacted my life from that part of the world, to the life that I lived as a young, Queer kid in Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Herrington found his way to UBC first in 2015 as a student, completing an undergraduate degree in human geography in 2021. He has been working with the International Student Initiative continuously since 2017.
“I have questions,” Herrington said regarding his February 14 detention. He still wants to know why the RCMP stopped him that day, and whether the university — his employer — cares that the officers impeded his ability to do his job.
At the same time, Herrington holds another view of the incident: “I’m kind of glad this happened to me.”
When he was being walked by police past people on their way into campus, he said he couldn’t allow the stereotypes associated with wearing a keffiyeh — that someone might be antisemitic or violent, for example — to persist, accounting for his decision to verbally alert people to what was happening.
“I don't think that that boy who gave it to me gave it to me thinking that I would immediately understand the weight of it. But I hope that he gave it to me knowing that at some point in my life I would put it to use,” he said.
“I was wearing it in the way that he taught me to wear it.”
This story was updated at 9:19 p.m. on March 5 to correct the name of Herrington's unit at UBC. A previous version of this story reported that Herrington worked with International Student Development. He works with the similarly-named but distinct International Student Initiative unit. The Ubyssey regrets this error.
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