Editorial
October 7 2026
No laughing matter
The most depressing thing about the sign hung outside an off-campus house near StFX last weekend is that, in 2026, anyone still needs to be told why it was unacceptable.
“Drop-off zone: Acadia girlfriends” is not wit, satire or harmless Homecoming stupidity. It is a crude reduction of women to sexual objects, displayed publicly near a university that, like every institution of higher learning, is supposed to cultivate judgment, empathy, respect and adult behaviour.
To make matters worse – if that’s possible – it was StFX Homecoming, a weekend intended to celebrate the institution and what it represents. Acadia was also in Antigonish to play the X-Women in rugby – accomplished female athletes competing publicly and proudly at a high level for their universities.
To their credit, both universities responded with clear, articulate and unyielding condemnations.
StFX president Andy Hakin called the sign “degrading and deeply concerning” and said the university “unequivocally rejects misogyny, sexualized and gender-based violence, and the attitudes and behaviours that contribute to rape culture.”
In an official statement, Acadia called what happened “a symptom of a society-wide problem,” adding: “It is our collective responsibility as higher education institutions to speak out against violence against women, and rape culture specifically.”
StFX knows the problem first-hand: its 2024-25 sexual violence report recorded 63 disclosures, 11 formal investigations and six findings of responsibility. And in Statistics Canada’s 2019 national survey of post-secondary students, 45 per cent of women reported experiencing unwanted sexualized behaviour connected to their studies.
Nor is this confined to StFX, Nova Scotia or Canada.
Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., has agreed to an independent review of its handling of a 2024 case in which a woman alleged she was drugged and raped by seven students at a fraternity house. The university’s own 2025 survey found 35 per cent of undergraduate women who responded reported experiencing non-consensual sexual contact during their time there.
That is the context in which a sign like the one that appeared in Antigonish last weekend must be understood. It is why nobody should be laughing.
Despite the laudatory responses in this case from both StFX and Acadia, the corrective cannot begin and end with university statements, investigations or disciplinary action. Those things are part of it. But even more important is what happens around kitchen tables, in locker rooms, at parties and among friends when somebody decides this kind of behaviour is funny.
StFX mathematics professor Tara Taylor saw the sign while driving home with her child, returned to photograph it and posted the image to social media. She refused to remain silent.
Good for her.
Antigonish Mayor Sean Cameron and Warden Nicholas MacInnis made the same broader point, stressing that such behaviour has no place in the community and that everyone has a responsibility to speak out when the safety, dignity and well-being of others are threatened.
Hear, hear.
The rest of us do have an obligation to push back and refuse the easy excuse that these things are only jokes. They are not. We have come too far to pretend otherwise or to accept this kind of imbecility as reasonable behaviour.
