On Feb. 14, approximately 300 student demonstrators marched through McGill’s downtown campus following UQAM’s vote for an unlimited strike. UQAM is one of many universities and CEGEPs in Quebec that have voted to go on an unlimited strike to protest the Quebec government’s plans to increase university tuition fees for local students by $1,625 over five years.
According to numbers from the Coalition Large de l’Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (CLASSE), by Feb. 27 over 65,000 students in Quebec were on strike, and more student associations are scheduled to vote in upcoming weeks.
“UQAM, McGill, same struggle,” the demonstrators chanted as they marched through campus. The students protested in front of the James Administration Building and marched through the McConnell Engineering Building before continuing the protest through McGill College Ave. and down St. Catherine Ave. towards UQAM.
Olivier Lamoureux, a second-year graduate student in sociology at UQAM explained that the protest followed a General Assembly vote to initiate the unlimited student strike.
According CLASSE spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, each student association can vote for or against the strike in a General Assembly or a referendum.
“Classes [are] suspended but only for the time that students want [them] to be suspended,” he said. “Students vote if they want to go on strike and vote for the duration of the strike also. All the decisions are democratically taken.”
Whether each administration participates in the student strike and cancels classes is up to each university, but Nadeau-Dubois noted that so far, most universities have cancelled class in accordance with the vote.
Miriam Gaumond, a photography student at Concordia who marched through McGill, said that she supported the unlimited student strike.
“We are already in the red, so in five years it’s going to be much worse,” she said. “The problem is we don’t have parents who help us, we are independent. The government helps us, but not that much, and if the government raises the price of university, I don’t know how I [will] make it.”
Although McGill is currently not part of CLASSE, the students in the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) recently voted in a special referendum in favour of amending the AUS Constitution to make the General Assembly the highest governing body of the student society, making the AUS eligible to join CLASSE in accordance with the coalition’s bylaws.
On March 2, McGill’s Science Undergraduate Society (SUS) will hold a General Assembly that will discuss the formation of a strike committee, among other motions.
—Carolina Millán Ronchetti
