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Yes, there are issues to be tackled. No, roughhouse tactics are not the way
PEGGY CURRAN, The Gazette
Published: Thursday, November 15

The evening student was very young and deadly earnest. A tuition hike and $160 boost in student fees at Université du Québec à Montréal this fall were terribly unfair, she said.

She'd moved to Montreal because commuting to and from her parents' home in Valleyfield took more than three hours by bus. But her folks were not paying a penny toward her tuition or living expenses and she was having trouble staying ahead of the bills.

"Sometimes I think I'd be better off if I just stayed home and collected welfare," she told a visitor to the gloomy classroom at the back of a converted office building on Ste. Catherine St. E.

She was outraged by UQÀM's decision to tack on extra fees to help cover its burgeoning deficit and said she was fully in favour of a student strike this week to protest against the increases.

Hear, hear, said a man at the back of the class, a wonderfully opinionated supporter of the Green Party. "University should be free here, like Finland."

Yet few classmates shared their enthusiasm. Silent until then, a young woman from China described what a privilege it is for students in her country to go to university - and how parents somehow scrape together the money to pay for it. A woman from South America described how she'd paid twice as much to get her first degree in Brazil, only to be told when she got here it was only as good as a CEGEP diploma.

"The money has to come from somewhere," said another student, a Quebec-born man in his mid-30s. "Who do you think is going to pay for your education if you don't?"

Such a good question.

On Monday, students in faculties representing half of UQÀM's students launched an unlimited strike to express their disgust with tuition hikes and increases in ancillary fees.

Just for a laugh, students - some wearing clown noses, others with the hoary look of veteran agitators - set up chairs in the middle of Ste. Catherine St. in a mock classroom. Then 100 protesters, some sporting a red square signifying their anarchist leanings, swarmed Claude Corbo, a veteran political science professor and former rector who is the only candidate who has come forward to lead UQÀM out of its current financial morass. Police were called and three men were arrested.

Before the strike began, leaders of five student associations signed an agreement with the university, pledging respect for the rights of individuals and belongings. Yet when the time came to close the campus for the night, protesters refused to leave, hurling chairs and ransacking classrooms before police managed to evict them.

On Tuesday night, action shifted to CÉGEP du Vieux Montréal, where 105 people were arrested and charged with assault and public mischief when they refused to leave the campus, used vending machines, chairs and a toilet to build a barricade and turned fire hoses on police.

You can bet they'll have other tricks in store this afternoon, when students from assorted campuses are expected to rally at Dorchester Square before their now-traditional descent on Premier Jean Charest's Montreal office on McGill College Ave.

In whose world does any of this constitute the behaviour of people who belong at a university? What brain surgeons-in-training imagine anyone will listen to their demands - never mind believe they're owed a free ride - when they've allowed their movement to be hijacked by a bunch of thugs who wouldn't go to class even if they were enrolled in a program?

Yes, there are legitimate issues that need to be tackled as Quebec slowly lifts the freeze on tuition fees. An overhaul of grants and bursary formulas is vital to ensure students from underprivileged families get a fair shake and don't have to drop out or graduate with an insupportable debt.

Parents, too, need to rethink their own responsibility toward the cost of their child's education, so a smart girl from Valleyfield with ambition isn't left carrying the whole load and feeling stressed and overwhelmed.

At UQÀM, students have cause to feel they're being made to pay part of the burden for real-estate follies that have pushed the school to the brink of bankruptcy.

Leaders of the strike there say students who don't want to be out on the street should have shown up at the assembly to vote against it. But students shouldn't be punished - or run the risk of losing a semester - because they'd rather go to class than strike or play at politics.

Especially when their student government can't be bothered to heed the rule of law.

pcurran@thegazette.canwest.com