The Dalhousie Student Union is slamming the university’s decision to pursue "restorative justice" for male dentistry students who allegedly made sexually violent comments on Facebook about some of their female classmates.

The school's president, Richard Florizone, announced Wednesday night that fourth-year students involved in the Facebook group “Class of DDS 2015 Gentlemen” will not face suspension or expulsion.

Instead, the matter will be dealt with through a process involving several face-to-face meetings between the parties involved, he said.

The response has prompted a backlash on Facebook and Twitter, where the hashtag #DalhousieHatesWomen started to trend after Florizone’s announcement.

But Florizone is defending his decision, saying that’s what the women wanted.

“It is the choice of the women most directly involved by this to go through a restorative justice process,” he said Thursday.

More than 6,800 people have signed an online petition, demanding that the students be expelled.

Some of the harshest criticism has come from Jennifer Nowoselski, vice-president of the Dalhousie Student Union.

“Dalhousie’s reaction to this story is not action. Our students are not safer today than they were yesterday,” she said Thursday.

“It’s unfortunate that we are in an institution where there are higher consequences for misquoting a paper than there are for talking about raping your peers.”

But Florizone said restorative justice is misunderstood, and people should let the process play out before passing judgment.

“So what we communicated last night is not an outcome and a punishment, but rather a process to determine that outcome,” he said.

Restorative justice aims to reintegrate offenders back into a group with heavy consultation from the victims.

Florizone said many of the affected women came forward, and agreed to proceed with the informal and confidential “restorative justice” process.

As well, if either side no longer meets a standard of "good-faith participation" at any time in the talks, a formal complaints procedure will be launched, he said.

The university will also be creating a presidential task force in the coming weeks that will look at ensuring the school's community is "inclusive and respectful."

Wayne MacKay, a law professor at Dalhousie University, said he believes the school is taking the right step.

“It’s seen by some as being soft. I don’t think that’s necessarily true,” said MacKay. “Sometimes I think some pretty important sanctions come out of it.”

He also believes the university could have faced litigation if Florizone had decided to expel the students.

“A lot of money is at stake in invested tuition, time, and people aren’t going to take that in a sort of easy ‘well, that’s the way life is,’ sort of thing,” said MacKay. “They are probably going to challenge it in some form. Now, if that’s the right response, it’s still the thing to do.”

CTV News spoke to a number of female dentists about the issue and many said they were shocked and disturbed by the alleged comments.

Dr. Heather Carr, who was president of the Dentistry Association during her fourth year at the university, said she has faith in the process and hopes the impact on dentistry as a whole will be minimal.

“I think that some questions will be asked, but I would hope that there would be no impact on the profession,” said Carr. “As a dentist, I pride myself on having a strong relationship with my patients, one that incorporates trust, and that they’ll understand that this is isolated to this incident.”

Nova Scotia Health Minister Leo Glavine has the power to intervene, but said he has no plans to do so.

“They haven’t graduated even at this point, so I think it’s very, very early for me as minister to intervene in any shape or form,” he said.

The issue even made it to the Nova Scotia legislature, with MLA Joanne Bernard weighing in.

"It's very concerning that many of these students are an exam set away from being doctors," she said.

Meanwhile, Premier Stephen McNeil said the solution to eliminating misogyny starts at home.

“We can’t expect, quite frankly, our public institutions to deal with this issue if we as fathers are not prepared to have these conversations with our sons to make sure this behaviour changes," said McNeil.

If the women involved aren’t happy with the process, MacKay said there may be other options for them, such as filing a human rights complaint.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Jayson Baxter