Student demonstrators block trade centre
Student demonstrators have been blocking access to the world trade centre this morning (but best to check manifencours to know what’s happening currently).
Even the Gazette is running a piece on recent police tactics being excessive and the Globe&Mail talks to Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois.
Jack 09:29 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
I know this will create polemics, but here’s a question.Why are no Anglophone University or CEGEPS on boycott,I attended a grad program at Concordia in the Arts, and despite a strike vote by the Grad students classes went on as usual and a very small minority respected the boycott.Basically with few exceptions in the English institutions it is business as usual,how come?
Kate 09:40 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
That’s a good question. I can’t explain it. Anyone?
Marc 09:40 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
Because the anglo universities aren’t represented by the FEUQ. McGill, for instance, is affiliated with the CFS, not the provincial assoc.
Anto 09:49 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
I’d guess part of the explanation might be the fact that they house more foreign students, who are not affected by the tuition hikes.
C_Erb 10:10 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
I can speak more for Concordia than McGill but at Concordia, many programs voted to go on strike and the entire undergrad population voted on a week-long strike through the undergraduate student union (which was later rejected by John Molson School of Business students).
After a strike mandate was accepted in individual GAs, it was up to the students in each department to decide how to proceed from there. My program (urban planning), along with Geography were known to be among the most militant and serious of the Concordia programs on strike and we effectively shut down class instruction through picket lines (hard for profs, soft for students). We had the luxury of having the support of most of our professors and most didn’t cross the picket lines. Other programs (such as my other one, Sociology) voted on a strike mandate but didn’t have the general support (from faculty or students) to carry through and shut down the program. It was about half and half for programs who were shut down and those who were carrying on business as usual.
The problem we had was that the university admin was acting as if the strike wasn’t happening and trying to carry on business as usual. The Francophone students are able to shut down their schools and carry through with their strike actions in a much more meaningful way because they were able to shut down their schools and not have admin threatening anyone involved with the strike with academic punishment (which was happening frequently at Concordia). Most students made alternate arrangements with their professors to finish the semester or applied for incompletes which will allow them to finish the semester once the strike has finished. This was the first strike ever at Concordia or any other Anglophone institution so there was obviously a learning curve resulting in the strike not being as successful as those at the Francophone universities.
@Marc, Concordia is associated with FEUQ (and used to be associated with ASSE back when it was a much more leftist institution). There are people agitating for Concordia to leave FEUQ and join ASSE and with the student population becomming much more militant due to the strike, it might happen. McGill undergrads aren’t associated but the post-grads are. Concordia left the CFS a couple years ago and is still stuck in a legal battle with them to be officially disaffiliated.
Concerning foreign students, my observation was that some foreign students were involved but mostly Americans and those from the ROC (most of whom study in Quebec because it’s much cheaper). By and large, international students who seemed to come from rich families weren’t even paying attention or were in programs not on strike (such as engineering) and those who were most against the strike seemed to be the typical West Island Anglophone (read the Gazette coverage of the strike if you don’t know what I’m talking about). These are allgeneralizations of course, but it’s mostly what I observed.
Jack 11:50 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
Thanks C_Erb. I think another element I was trying to shake out is the idea that many english speakers do not feel as invested in the future of Quebec. I was really under the impression that my generation( old) would be the last alienated generation. Am I reading too much into this?
qatzelok 13:10 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
@ Jack: “many english speakers do not feel as invested in the future of Quebec.”
English speakers have been trying to destroy all other competing cultures in North America for the last 300 years. “Not feeling invested” is business school speak for “can’t comprehend traditional cultural values.” The Anglos of Montreal, like everywhere else in North America, were decultured in order to provide commercial propagandists with a blank slate: culture-free minds with no sense of community, other than the mall.
Spock 13:23 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
qatzelok, you need a vacation man!
Ian 13:27 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
Once again you forget that what is now Quebec was a colony founded by the French, and there were already “traditional cultures” living here. This entire hemisphere has a legacy of colonialism that can’t be laid at the doorstep of any one European country, why do you insist on painting Francophone culture as the only “traditional” culture, somehow oppressed by the multiplicity of cultures that have coexisted in Quebec for centuries?
Kevin 14:06 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
For the strike as a whole I think it comes down to a difference in culture.
Speaking in the broadest terms possible, Anglophones and Allophones, for the most part, are more likely to go to university and more likely to have family support to do so.
Francophones don’t get that parental support.
(And I know there are thousands of exceptions. I’m an anglo and got no support from my parents.)
@C_Erb
By sheer fluke I know several people in urban planning who oppose the strike, and they are pissed that so many geography professors support it. When classes were cancelled because 1 person stands in front of a door, while 2 dozen wait to get in, something is very undemocratic…
qatzelok 14:28 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
@ Spock: “qatzelok, you need a vacation man!”
I think you’re right. Time to let other posters provide input from other points of view than those that have been implanted by Hollywood/mass media.
mdblog 15:08 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
qatzelok, it must be nice to have the ability to be perfectly objective
Kid A 16:16 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
@C_Erb I really have to dispute your claim that “the entire undergrad population” voted for the strike at Concordia. Only 1700 people (4.9% of the undergrad student population) even got the opportunity to vote, and only about 2/3 of those actually voted yes. Strange concept of democracy. I’m long done my semester, but the general opinion in my courses was overwhelmingly against any action (and I’m not in JMSB).
C_Erb 17:23 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
Full disclosure: I have been fairly involved with the strike effort (up to a couple weeks ago, I ahven’t been in Quebec for about 2 weeks now)
I think a difference needs to be made between anglophones from Quebec and those from elsewhere. Again, I’m generalizing and speaking from my own experience but most of the anglophones from Quebec that I have met tend to be very much against the strike. However, I’ve seen a split amongst Anglophones who are from outside of Quebec. There seems to be one group who, as Jack said, are not particularly invested in Quebec and just don’t care. They want to finish their studies and leave when they’re done. The other group are those who came to Quebec because they are ideologically aligned to the social democratic policies that Quebec is known for and want to fight for it (this includes myself). At Concordia, these people seemed to make up the majority or at least a large portion of the people who were heavily involved in the strike effort.
@Kevin, I don’t think there ever would have been a time where there was only one person on a picket line for a geography or urban planning class. We generally made sure to have quite a few people on the picket lines to keep what you said from happening. The geog/urbs department has quite a progressive faculty so it’s understandable that they wouldn’t cross the line. I remember one student complaining to a professor that she wasn’t teaching the class because of the strike and her response was that she would look pretty hypocritical standing in front of a class lecturing about social justice issues (as they relate to geography) before the strike and then force her way through a student picket line. I also heard from a few part-time profs who had been on their own strike just a few years prior saying that they felt they had to support the student strike after receiving so much support from students during their strike.
@Kid_A: I agree that more should have been done to get more students out to vote. I think the bylaws need to be changed to allow for ballot voting but it’s just not how it’s set up right now. However, it’s unlikely that the turnout would have been much higher considering how involved students tend to be in school politics (the GA in February was the biggest in the school’s history and CSU voter turnout tends to hover around the 3% mark).
Kid A 17:30 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
@C_Erb I agree that a university-wide ballot may not have resulted in higher turnout, but at least it would’ve given all students the possibility to have their say. I and most of the other students I spoke to didn’t consider the strike vote legitimate. Full ballot voting would at least have given the result some legitimacy. The bylaws definitely need to be changed.
C_Erb 21:08 on 2012/05/08 Permalink
Agreed on all counts.
Kevin 07:41 on 2012/05/09 Permalink
@C_Erb
I saw pictures of several classes where one protester cancelled class. Now pictures can be cropped/edited/framed, but I think it has more to do with the nature of teachers in that department than anything else.
I also have to laugh at someone lecturing at social justice thinking that obeying the tyranny of the minority is *justice* ;)
Kate 08:54 on 2012/05/09 Permalink
C_Erb and Kid A, thanks for the discussion here – you’ve helped me understand this issue.
Susana Machado 23:03 on 2012/05/09 Permalink
Concordia student here – Études Françaises – Traduction. We have been attending class ( summer semester started last week ) and going to protests between or after classes. Because if we want to join the OTTIAQ after when we graduate we cannot afford to loose a semester or have incomplete or other deferments during our Undergrads. When a semester starts you have to finish it unless you have medical dispensation or you loose your “Spécialisation” . »Big red squares everywhere in the classes but we are all there. And when I say we go to protests, I am not particularly talking about me….