10-year-old students weren’t discriminated against

A complaint of age discrimination by the mother of two 10-year-old twin boys has been dismissed.

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario complaint was filed by Wendy Foster against the University of Ottawa after her boys were removed by the school from a course on "science and social activism" about a month after they began attending classes in 2006.

They had been initially allowed into the class as "special students," but the school later decided that they could not attend because they did not meet the entry requirements.

The HRTO adjudicator, David Muir, said there was nothing discriminatory about the school’s requirements.

Although he dismissed the case because the Ontario Human Rights Code does not apply to people under 18 years of age, he wrote that the university’s regulations:

"clearly contemplate that a person applying for entrance to a university level course will have completed a secondary school education or, by virtue of their age and life experience, have achieved a level of intellectual development sufficient to participate meaningfully in a university environment."