As I’m writing this, I should be in class. I’m not in class though because there is a massive pile of desks and chairs--from floor to ceiling--blocking my way. A “blocage” (said with a French accent) is what they’re calling it. The students at my school are on strike.
Actually, I should say that the students at my faculty are on strike. The rest of the faculties and schools in the area are still having classes and exams and everything. It’s only my faculty that has completely closed down the campus where we are. It first started about two weeks ago when the students were going to hold a huge protest right in the main hall of our faculty. The president of the school got wind of this, and evacuated everyone from the school. The students held the protest outside of the school, tossed chairs and desks all around blocking all the entries and so the campus was closed down with chains and locks. Classes were cancelled for the next two days. The school reopened, but on the second day, when I showed up for my evening class, there was no teacher, and someone came running into my classroom to tell us that there was another strike. No class for the rest of the week. It opened once more for a couple days, and then I think it was the president who decided to shut it down for a while. And here I am today, not knowing what’s going on or whether I will have class tomorrow or not. (Did I mention that the train company in France is on strike today, too?) Welcome to France.
The students are striking the privatization of post-secondary education. Basically, they don’t want to have what we have in Canada. Right now I have friends paying anywhere from 7€ to a few hundred euros each year. It’s really cheap. Everyone in France has access to higher education, and there are heaps of bursaries that they can apply for (hence one of my friends paying only 7€ for the year). The government wants to turn it into a system (like Canada’s) where tuition will resemble 5000€ and therefore, not everyone will have access. So if you take this into account, you’ll realize that the students right now are striking a service that they’re using. It doesn’t really make sense. You can’t “strike” a service that you’re using. You can boycott it, but you can’t strike it.
Anyhow, all the classes except for the sports classes are cancelled, so it’s kind of fun. (My academic classes: langues du monde, morphologie, discours et pratiques langagières, italien, allemand.) All I have to go to are the sports classes! (I have a soccer class with the girls, one with the boys, a volleyball class, and a soccer coaching course where we work with 8-year-olds from the nearby primary school.) Rough life, eh? However, as nice as it is for the moment, it’s also really frustrating. I have no idea when to go to class or when the strike will be over or even really what’s going on. I’ve heard rumours that classes for the next couple of weeks might be cancelled, and the repercussions of that would be adding a catch-up week or two, then pushing the exam period back, which would push the second semester back and in turn, the school year would finish later into the summer than it already does. I am really not looking forward to that if it happens.
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