Quebec student movement

[punch_line_loser]

First off, I acknowledge that this may be put in the wrong forum, but it seemed more appropos here than in any of the others. Feel free to moderate me.

Anyway, has anyone been following the student movements in Quebec lately? I’m a student at McGill who also works downtown so I see the demonstrations and read the updates every day, but I want to know what some other folks think about what’s going on.

I myself am not involved in the demonstrations, although last fall when the issue at hand was the McGill non-academic labor strike I was much more active. At this point, though, it seems as though the rad contingent (at McGill, anyway) has been too antagonistic to people who disagree with them, the occupations and violent demonstrations have obscured their actual message to a point where it doesn’t seem aligning with them would be effective.

Of course, the broader movement comprises much more than just McGill (or Quebec, for that matter, but the scale of what’s going on in Montreal especially is prety historic), and in principle I agree with it, at least as far as what i see as the central maxim: The Quebec university budget crisis has much more to do with financial mismanagement than underfunding, and education should be much more accessible. Also, the actions of Montreal police (I think) have often been pretty unacceptable (see November 10th demonstration at McGill) and the recently proposed legislation to put protesters away for ten years simply for wearing a mask at a protest speaks to the development of a super freaky police state (cite).

But this is a part of my everyday world, and I know personally a lot of the people who are involved, so I can’t claim an objective point of view on all of it. I wanted to know what y’all thought, if you think anything about it.

[RickJay]

By all accounts the students’ cause is losing, not gaining, public support, in part because it seems to rely in many cases on bullying and threatening students who aren’t part of the demonstrations.

It’s going to fail, for that reason. As public sympathy wanes, the government has, every day, even less reason to give in.

[Esox_Lucius]

If the students were demonstrating against real human rights violations by an intractible government, like slavery or child labour, I might understand the violence and might be out there myself. But protesting violently over increases to the lowest tuitions in the country doesn’t get any sympathy from me.

@punch_line_loser

Also, the actions of Montreal police (I think) have often been pretty unacceptable (see November 10th demonstration at McGill) and the recently proposed legislation to put protesters away for ten years simply for wearing a mask at a protest speaks to the development of a super freaky police state (cite).

Thanks to the anarchists, putting a mask on at a demonstration is now equated with creating random havoc without having to answer for it, a nightmare for police whose job is to maintain order. If the cops were given carte blanche to arrest everyone just to get the guilty, that would be a super freaky police state. Instead, a deterrent intended only for knuckle-dragging idiots without penalizing the innocent was created. Those who don’t like the new penalty should take it out on the anarchists, not the more socially-responsible lawmakers and police.

[independentDemocrat]

The French don’t mess around do they??

[Bryan_Ekers]

Aside from the nuisance of getting caught in traffic jams resulting from their protests… no, I haven’t been following it.

[Hypnagogic_Jerk]

Yes, I (of course) have been following the movement rather closely, though not involving myself directly. My student union held a few strike votes over the weeks, but I didn’t bother turning out to vote. Why? First, as a soon-to-be-over Ph.D. student, I feel less directly involved in the whole thing, but most importantly, neither the “red” nor the “green”* side truly represent my personal opinions. I think tuition fees will have to be raised by some amount, but I strongly disagree with the way the government has been managing the issue. They should have tried to negotiate with the student leaders from the beginning, instead of letting the problem fester until it got where it is now.

The first thing to realise is that while people outside Quebec might have started hearing about the movement only a few weeks ago, when demonstrations started getting violent, some schools have been on strike since February. Both the government and the student leaders thought they could outlast the other side. The students thought there was no way the government would let the school term be cancelled, and that they could benefit from its overwhelming unpopularity**, while the government expected the strike movement to lose its wind and the general approval for a tuition raise in the population to help it win the day and to maybe raise its popularity before the next election. It’s only two weeks or so ago that the minister of Education, Line Beauchamp, was first allowed by her boss to meet with student representatives, and suspended the negotiations because she didn’t like one of them***. Then the negotiations started again, but as soon as they birthed a prospective accord, the government almost in those words started bragging that they’d managed to screw the students over. So of course the accord has been soundly defeated by the student unions.

At this point, our best hope would be what I heard former minister and former President of the National Assembly Jean-Pierre Charbonneau suggest on Thursday: a ceasefire, or truce. The government agrees to suspend the hike for a year, while the students agree to end the strikes and finish their already severely endangered term. And we can start the discussions again later this year, when tempers will have gone down and we can actually hope to solve the issue. But the government sees “standing firm” as the only thing that can save it come the next election, so hope for this truce to materialize is still low.
*For the uninitiated, the red and green squares are the symbols representing respectively the anti-raise and pro-raise students. The red square was introduced during the last student strike in Quebec back in 2005; it was reintroduced this year, while students for higher tuition fees introduced the green square. By metonimy, we’ve started referring to them as “red students” and “green students”. Since then we’ve seen variants multiply: commentator Richard Martineau tried to introduce the yellow square (for a tuition raise, but lower than the one the government tries to push), and in the last few days I’ve started hearing about the white square (for a truce between both parties). Say what you want about the whole movement, I still think the red square, and its variants, are simply amazing symbols: simple, meaningful and memorable.

**That’s another major factor. The Quebec provincial government is disfavoured by around 75% of people, according to polls. Their major election plank (the Plan Nord) is being panned by critics as short-selling our natural resources without regard for the environmental disruption it will cause, or even for the rights of residents (including Natives), and the allegations of corruption against ministers keep piling on. Any other government would have tried to raise tuition rates, they could have done so without anywhere near the level of opposition we’re seeing now.

***The CLASSE, or Coalition large des associations pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (that’s an engineered acronym), was founded late last year in order to federate the opposition to the tuition hike. They have, I have to say, an anarchist structure (and maybe anarchist positions as well): their two spokespersons, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois and Jeanne Reynolds, are not leaders or presidents or anything of the sort. They can only defend positions that have been voted by the assemblies of their member unions. They couldn’t even condemn the violence happening during demonstrations before it was actually voted on, which is why Beauchamp chose to exclude them. They are effectively powerless mascots. My opinion of the CLASSE? Traditional representative democracy, where leaders can actually act with authority (i.e. lead), isn’t such a bad idea after all!

[Hypnagogic_Jerk]

@punch_line_loser

Of course, the broader movement comprises much more than just McGill (or Quebec, for that matter, but the scale of what’s going on in Montreal especially is prety historic), and in principle I agree with it, at least as far as what i see as the central maxim: The Quebec university budget crisis has much more to do with financial mismanagement than underfunding, and education should be much more accessible.

From what I can see, Martine Desjardins (president of the FEUQ) was insisting on the need to examine more closely how universities manage their money. There have been some serious scandals coming to light about this issue. And one of the most interesting things about last week’s proposed accord was the creation of an investigating committee, with the savings found coming back to the students. But of course the government had to poison the well by saying the committee wasn’t certain to find anything to save. (And the composition of the committee, where students would be a small minority, is also an issue.)

Also, the actions of Montreal police (I think) have often been pretty unacceptable (see November 10th demonstration at McGill) and the recently proposed legislation to put protesters away for ten years simply for wearing a mask at a protest speaks to the development of a super freaky police state (cite).

I don’t know about this demonstration at McGill, but I’m sure you’ve heard of the demonstration in Victoriaville on May 4 where people were severely injured. Of course the behaviour of the police is and will be questioned, but such events are why we need a truce as soon as possible.

As for the mask ban, well, we all know how our federal government feels about CRIME! And if you’re not for it, then you’re with child molesters. (I’m against demonstrating with masks on on principle, but of course there are free speech issues which we shouldn’t neglect.)

@Esox_Lucius

If the students were demonstrating against real human rights violations by an intractible government, like slavery or child labour, I might understand the violence and might be out there myself. But protesting violently over increases to the lowest tuitions in the country doesn’t get any sympathy from me.

Well, the police itself said the violence wasn’t because of “students”, but because of a minority of violent protestors. As for Quebec having low tuition rates, I have a story to tell. I did my bachelor’s and my master’s at the University of Ottawa. Now, this of course is in Ontario, where tuition fees are higher than in Quebec. But the fees I actually paid were actually not much higher than what I’d have paid in Quebec. Why? The university offered me entrance scholarships, which I could renew by keeping a certain GPA, and which paid the greater part of my tuition fees. And I wasn’t even at the highest level of entrance scholarship: with an admission average even higher, I could have got $1000 more per year.

My point is that there are people everywhere in Canada who manage to pay almost nothing for their education. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel Quebecers tend to be more about “universal accessibility” than other Canadians. Maybe it’s because we’re a traditionally underprivileged people, who managed to raise itself so high in the last few decades at least in part by encouraging higher education. The fact is that we tend to hold, I would say, “republican values”, such as equality of opportunity for all citizens. I may not be expressing myself correctly here, but there’s a reason why Quebec has high taxes and a lot of social services (and subsidised education), while other Canadian provinces prefer lower taxes and fewer services.

[Nanoda]

It’s an occasional low-level thing for me, maybe coming up on my morning radio news once or twice a week. I haven’t been very sympathetic, partly as I hadn’t heard about any fiscal mismanagement, and partly that the rates they were complaining about are lower than what I paid here a decade ago.

I can see that in an ideal world we’d have free education (like the U.K. used to have), but especially given the current economic goings-on, that’s just impossible.

I’m also on the fence about the mask issue. On the one hand, I like the idea of being able to join an orderly protest anonymously should I so desire. On the other hand, jackasses out to break stuff use protests as an excuse (also tarring the original cause as Esox Lucius says). If I were organizing a large protest, I’d encourage anyone attending to tear off anyone’s mask and kick them to the curb, as they’re as likely as not just out to smash glass and burn cars.

[Esox_Lucius]

@Hypnagogic_Jerk

As for Quebec having low tuition rates, I have a story to tell. I did my bachelor’s and my master’s at the University of Ottawa. Now, this of course is in Ontario, where tuition fees are higher than in Quebec. But the fees I actually paid were actually not much higher than what I’d have paid in Quebec. Why? The university offered me entrance scholarships, which I could renew by keeping a certain GPA, and which paid the greater part of my tuition fees. And I wasn’t even at the highest level of entrance scholarship: with an admission average even higher, I could have got $1000 more per year.

My point is that there are people everywhere in Canada who manage to pay almost nothing for their education. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel Quebecers tend to be more about “universal accessibility” than other Canadians. Maybe it’s because we’re a traditionally underprivileged people, who managed to raise itself so high in the last few decades at least in part by encouraging higher education. The fact is that we tend to hold, I would say, “republican values”, such as equality of opportunity for all citizens. I may not be expressing myself correctly here, but there’s a reason why Quebec has high taxes and a lot of social services (and subsidised education), while other Canadian provinces prefer lower taxes and fewer services.

I don’t dispute anything you said there, but the ideal of universal accessibility in a
time when debt-ridden governments, including Quebec’s, have to focus on budget cutting seems naive at best and selfish at worst. The economic reality these days is that we have to start paying a bit more and get a bit less in return. The average wage earner has been living with that for years now, and students protesting an increase in tuition and demanding universal accessibility look like they’re asking for special treatment. That and the violence, I think, are the major reasons they’re not getting more support from the general public.

@Hypnagogic_Jerk

Well, the police itself said the violence wasn’t because of “students”, but because of a minority of violent protestors.

@Nanoda

If I were organizing a large protest, I’d encourage anyone attending to tear off anyone’s mask and kick them to the curb, as they’re as likely as not just out to smash glass and burn cars.

I was thinking the same thing myself. Peaceful protesters are the ones being harmed the most by the rioters. It would be in their own self-interest to distance themselves as much as they can from them.

[suranyi]

@Hypnagogic_Jerk

Yes, I (of course) have been following the movement rather closely, though not involving myself directly. My student union held a few strike votes over the weeks, but I didn’t bother turning out to vote. Why? First, as a soon-to-be-over Ph.D. student, I feel less directly involved in the whole thing, but most importantly, neither the “red” nor the “green”* side truly represent my personal opinions. I think tuition fees will have to be raised by some amount, but I strongly disagree with the way the government has been managing the issue. They should have tried to negotiate with the student leaders from the beginning, instead of letting the problem fester until it got where it is now.

The first thing to realise is that while people outside Quebec might have started hearing about the movement only a few weeks ago, when demonstrations started getting violent, some schools have been on strike since February. Both the government and the student leaders thought they could outlast the other side. The students thought there was no way the government would let the school term be cancelled, and that they could benefit from its overwhelming unpopularity**, while the government expected the strike movement to lose its wind and the general approval for a tuition raise in the population to help it win the day and to maybe raise its popularity before the next election. It’s only two weeks or so ago that the minister of Education, Line Beauchamp, was first allowed by her boss to meet with student representatives, and suspended the negotiations because she didn’t like one of them***. Then the negotiations started again, but as soon as they birthed a prospective accord, the government almost in those words started bragging that they’d managed to screw the students over. So of course the accord has been soundly defeated by the student unions.

At this point, our best hope would be what I heard former minister and former President of the National Assembly Jean-Pierre Charbonneau suggest on Thursday: a ceasefire, or truce. The government agrees to suspend the hike for a year, while the students agree to end the strikes and finish their already severely endangered term. And we can start the discussions again later this year, when tempers will have gone down and we can actually hope to solve the issue. But the government sees “standing firm” as the only thing that can save it come the next election, so hope for this truce to materialize is still low.
*For the uninitiated, the red and green squares are the symbols representing respectively the anti-raise and pro-raise students. The red square was introduced during the last student strike in Quebec back in 2005; it was reintroduced this year, while students for higher tuition fees introduced the green square. By metonimy, we’ve started referring to them as “red students” and “green students”. Since then we’ve seen variants multiply: commentator Richard Martineau tried to introduce the yellow square (for a tuition raise, but lower than the one the government tries to push), and in the last few days I’ve started hearing about the white square (for a truce between both parties). Say what you want about the whole movement, I still think the red square, and its variants, are simply amazing symbols: simple, meaningful and memorable.

**That’s another major factor. The Quebec provincial government is disfavoured by around 75% of people, according to polls. Their major election plank (the Plan Nord) is being panned by critics as short-selling our natural resources without regard for the environmental disruption it will cause, or even for the rights of residents (including Natives), and the allegations of corruption against ministers keep piling on. Any other government would have tried to raise tuition rates, they could have done so without anywhere near the level of opposition we’re seeing now.

***The CLASSE, or Coalition large des associations pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (that’s an engineered acronym), was founded late last year in order to federate the opposition to the tuition hike. They have, I have to say, an anarchist structure (and maybe anarchist positions as well): their two spokespersons, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois and Jeanne Reynolds, are not leaders or presidents or anything of the sort. They can only defend positions that have been voted by the assemblies of their member unions. They couldn’t even condemn the violence happening during demonstrations before it was actually voted on, which is why Beauchamp chose to exclude them. They are effectively powerless mascots. My opinion of the CLASSE? Traditional representative democracy, where leaders can actually act with authority (i.e. lead), isn’t such a bad idea after all!

Just as a point of reference, tuition at the University of California for in-state residents is now $13,000 per year. I imagine the cost for the public universities in Quebec is still far less than that.

[Hypnagogic_Jerk]

@Nanoda

I haven’t been very sympathetic, partly as I hadn’t heard about any fiscal mismanagement,

I wouldn’t expect someone from outside Quebec to hear about the deep issues, but one example of this is the îlot Voyageur. It’s not an issue I’m really an expert about, but I do know that it severely strained the UQAM’s finances.

@Esox_Lucius

I don’t dispute anything you said there, but the ideal of universal accessibility in a
time when debt-ridden governments, including Quebec’s, have to focus on budget cutting seems naive at best and selfish at worst.

Why selfish? Universal accessibility means that everyone can hope to have access to affordable services. Most student leaders aren’t in it for themselves, but for the sake of future students.

Also (and keep in mind that I actually agree that raising tuition fees will be necessary), I’m sure you can see why, to current students, a hike of 75% over five years, or 82% over seven years, is quite dramatic. I think they’re right to ask why they’re the ones who have to suffer these austerity measures. The government’s initial (imposed) plan didn’t even include any measures to ensure accessibility, such as increased loans and bursaries; thankfully some of this has been corrected, albeit quite late.

And as I’ve said in my previous post, I think the main reason why this debate has reached its current level of acrimony, apart from the government’s letting it fester, is the fact that the government is perceived as hopelessly corrupt and catering to people who don’t deserve it instead of ensuring services for citizens. Read this column; while a sports column, it contrasts the Charest government’s kissing Bernie Ecclestone’s ass to ensure the fate of the Canadian Grand Prix with its treatment of students. Similarly, the Plan Nord is perceived by many observers as giving away our natural resources, while we could ask for a lot more money for them. A lot of people, both inside and outside of the student movement, feel that this government is not in it for its citizens, but for a privileged class.

@suranyi

Just as a point of reference, tuition at the University of California for in-state residents is now $13,000 per year. I imagine the cost for the public universities in Quebec is still far less than that.

Precious few Quebecers will tell you that we should strive to be more like California. Even other Canadian provinces have tuition fees smaller than in the US, basing themselves on the idea that we should strive to make education as accessible as possible, even to poorer people.

[suranyi]

@Hypnagogic_Jerk

Precious few Quebecers will tell you that we should strive to be more like California. Even other Canadian provinces have tuition fees smaller than in the US, basing themselves on the idea that we should strive to make education as accessible as possible, even to poorer people.

That was the goal in California, too. But with our well-known state budget problems, this is what happens. With less and less money coming in from income taxes, they decide to raise tuition. For out-of-state residents the tuition is about double that amount. For lots of California students it is actually cheaper now to go to one of the many private universities, or to go to another state.

[Hari_Seldon]

I am not directly involved, but I have some definite views. Let me give a bit of a background. Quebec students pay around $2000 a year. This has been frozen for a number of years. It is hard, although not as bad as in the US, to raise taxes and Quebec is deeply in debt. So the government proposed raising tuition to about $3500 over a five year period. They later agreed to spread it over 7 years. Canadians from other provinces already pay over $3000 and foreigners pay over $10K (still a lot cheaper than most–if not all–state universities charge their in-state students). So the rise seems reasonable to me and the students appear to have over-reacted.

Three days ago, three smoke bombs were set off in the Montreal metro, closing it for several hours during morning rush hour. This cost the students an awful lot of bad publicity. There is reason to believe that the students who carried this out (they were caught on closed circuit and have been arrested) were acting on their own and not as representatives of one of the striking groups.

The other thing is that this “strike” was voted on in open meeting in which relatively few students were involved. One teacher I know told me that in his college (equivalent to a US junior college), of the 6000 students, only 300 showed up to vote and they voted 360-340 against joining the strike. They would not put it to a secret ballot among all the students, which leads to infer that they know–or at least fear–that they would lose.

Although these strikes have no legal basis, they have blocked access to many of the colleges so that students who want to attend classes have not been allowed to. There is an injunction against blocking the doors, but the government has failed to enforce the injunctions. I have an unfortunate suspicion that that is because is afraid that the police, once loosed, cannot be controlled. They are a law unto themselves and it appears that nothing they do will ever be punished. Some years ago they beat up and murdered some poor guy in a Dunkin’ Donuts who asked them to move their car that had double parked him in. Yes, he was a well-known hood and yes, he was considerably less than polite in his request, but they were not prosecuted. It was all caught on a CCTV operated by Dunkin’ Donuts. But this is just my suspicion. The idea of two undisciplined mobs, one armed and one not, fills me with dread.

Finally, I have to add something that happened to me on Thursday. I was walking down McGill College St. around 2PM. As I got to Ste. Catherine St, on my way to the train station, I saw two men, one with a TV camera and the second with a microphone. The latter shoved his mike into my face and said (near as I recall): “Excuse me sir, can you help us? We have been searching all over for [Premier of Quebec] Jean Charest’s balls, have you seen any sign of them?” I answered, “No sign, whatever.” He persisted: “He is rumoured to have a stick but no nuts, do you…”. Unfortunately, I have forgotten how the rest of the question went, but I mumbled something about that sounding right to me. He thanked me and I continued.

I expected the subway incident to have both forced his hand and given him greater freedom of action, but he hasn’t done a thing. I didn’t know about that when the TV guys interviewed me, but that is clearly what they were referring to.

[Svejk_1]

As the tuition hikes affect me too, I sort of hope the students will win, although I don’t expect them too. At the same time, I find the student movement highly obnoxious and saturated up to the brim with people supporting some sort of outlandish political agenda that goes way beyond just tuition hikes and involves far too much reading Foucault to be palatable to me. I also deeply resent the way in which the students (and this includes the students at McGill who’ve occupied buildings on campus before the strike got underway) try to make their protest out to be more than it is, calling it the ‘Maple spring’ (printemps d’erables, which sounds just like printemps arabe). Fight for your interests all you want but don’t pretend that Jean Charest and Ben Ali, Mubarak, and Sadat are essentially the same and that your struggle is somehow a struggle for freedom and democracy. And when riot police kicks your ass, that does not somehow make you like the protesters on Tahrir Square.*

That brings me to another point which is that I’ve found the discourse to focus too strictly on the money, when it should be about the quality of education that your money gets you. So you arrange a system in which every one has access to inexpensive higher education - that’s great. But not so much if the product that everyone has access to equally actually sucks and does not provide people with an education that makes them competitive on the job market. I find the student’s rethoric much too one-sided, aimed at having affordable higher education at all costs including to the detriment of the quality of the education itself.

• to be fair, the protests have mostly been remarkably peaceful so far in spite of the huge numbers of people in attendance, and I don’t think it’s fair to describe the protests as ‘violent’ altogether, like the OP does.

[Esox_Lucius]

@Hypnagogic_Jerk

Why selfish? Universal accessibility means that everyone can hope to have access to affordable services. Most student leaders aren’t in it for themselves, but for the sake of future students.

Also (and keep in mind that I actually agree that raising tuition fees will be necessary), I’m sure you can see why, to current students, a hike of 75% over five years, or 82% over seven years, is quite dramatic. I think they’re right to ask why they’re the ones who have to suffer these austerity measures. The government’s initial (imposed) plan didn’t even include any measures to ensure accessibility, such as increased loans and bursaries; thankfully some of this has been corrected, albeit quite late.

And as I’ve said in my previous post, I think the main reason why this debate has reached its current level of acrimony, apart from the government’s letting it fester, is the fact that the government is perceived as hopelessly corrupt and catering to people who don’t deserve it instead of ensuring services for citizens. Read this column; while a sports column, it contrasts the Charest government’s kissing Bernie Ecclestone’s ass to ensure the fate of the Canadian Grand Prix with its treatment of students. Similarly, the Plan Nord is perceived by many observers as giving away our natural resources, while we could ask for a lot more money for them. A lot of people, both inside and outside of the student movement, feel that this government is not in it for its citizens, but for a privileged class.

Are students the only ones suffering from austerity measures? Somehow I doubt it (since the Quebec gov’t has to cut back just like other gov’ts) and if they aren’t, that’s what I meant by selfish, or simply naive. I can’t comment on gov’t corruption or mismanagement or any of the other issues the students bring up, except to say that, to be honest, they come across as whiney.

(I’m speaking from my POV in Saskatchewan. For what it’s worth, it’s the prevailing attitude here.)

[Esox_Lucius]

Former Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard has just weighed in on the protests. I never, ever, in my life thought I’d see eye-to-eye with him on anything, but here he seems to be channeling my own thoughts.

…he questions the fairness of the current low-fee system that effectively forces lower-income taxpayers to fund the education of people who will enter high-paid professions shortly after graduating.

…

When I pointed out to [Bouchard] that many student leaders would say that he represents the greedy older generation, the fat-cat one per centers, Bouchard says that is a diversion.

That has become an element of today’s debate, he laments — “You know, ‘I don’t contest your arguments, I don’t attack the logic of your argument, but I don’t like you because you’re rich, because you’re this, because you’re that’” — and he feels that kind of argument diminishes people.

[suranyi]

@Esox_Lucius

Are students the only ones suffering from austerity measures? Somehow I doubt it (since the Quebec gov’t has to cut back just like other gov’ts) and if they aren’t, that’s what I meant by selfish, or simply naive. I can’t comment on gov’t corruption or mismanagement or any of the other issues the students bring up, except to say that, to be honest, they come across as whiney.

(I’m speaking from my POV in Saskatchewan. For what it’s worth, it’s the prevailing attitude here.)

That’s sort of my question, too. I’ve mentioned the situation in California. It’s really dire here. There have been complaints about the cuts to higher education here which have brought about the tuition increases, and the complaints are certainly justified, but the fact is that our financial situation is so bad that there have been cuts to just about every area of state services:

State parks – huge cuts, may be closing many of them.
Services to poor and elderly – huge cuts
Kindergarten through high school education – huge cuts

So the cuts to the universities is only one piece of this terrible picture.

University cuts may be getting proportionately more than their share of attention, because college students protest, while seniors and fourth graders don’t.

[punch_line_loser]

When the anti-tuition hike activity first started, it was because the students felt that McGill had thrown its support behind the strike without consulting the students, which led to the broader questions about the shady places the money comes from and how students have no say in how its spent. It is true that the Board of Governors is largely populated by corporate interests completely external to the actual student body of the university, and McGill is definitely not unique in that regard.

And that’s something I wanted to fight for - the kind of restructuring that seemed necessary to balance the interests of students and admin. But then the anarchists took the next step away from “restructuring” and toward “abolishing the university,” and the next thing I knew I was being asked to vote on a strike on the grounds of “free accessible education” even though all of our tuition payments had already been made. And when I didn’t want to strike? Now I’m a traitor, and there’s no group that wants to listen to me. It’s sad.

Of course, I can’t really speak to the experiences of students from other universities around here.

[antonio107]

@Hari_Seldon

Finally, I have to add something that happened to me on Thursday. I was walking down McGill College St. around 2PM. As I got to Ste. Catherine St, on my way to the train station, I saw two men, one with a TV camera and the second with a microphone. The latter shoved his mike into my face and said (near as I recall): “Excuse me sir, can you help us? We have been searching all over for [Premier of Quebec] Jean Charest’s balls, have you seen any sign of them?” I answered, “No sign, whatever.” He persisted: “He is rumoured to have a stick but no nuts, do you…”. Unfortunately, I have forgotten how the rest of the question went, but I mumbled something about that sounding right to me. He thanked me and I continued.

I believe that was David Menzies from Sun TV. I think someone posted it on my Facebook timeline. I may have seen you!

[MichaelEmouse]

Could it be that the gov’t wants the Quebe student movement to go on? It’s not difficult to let student movements make fools of themselves. Recently, I saw a guy carrying a sign that called for stopping the genocide of the Quebec nation. Yes, there is currently a genocide of the Quebec nation.

When some (typically the loudest) students are going on about crypto or not so crypto commie stuff, damages property and puts smoke bomb in the metro, the gov’t looks good compared to them. And things like natural resources exploitation and corruption in the construction industry get talked about less. If I were Charest, the student movement would be a nice enemy to have.
Wait, I see Jerk made some of the same remarks.