Two months have past
since the strike has been voted. Back then, I had no idea that it
could grow to the events of the past week.
I was against the strike.
I was against not because I want an augmentation of the tuition fees,
like lots of people may think. I would love that the tuition fees
would not increase, but I know that it is not possible .
That does not mean that
the strike was useless. I embraced the movement voted by democracy
and participated as much as I could. Even though I do not believe
that Line Beauchamp will changes her mind, some things had to
changes, like the amount of "prêts
et bourses"given
to students with the increase of the fees and how universities are
managed. The strike brought those problems to light and something had
to be done. Students working together to change our future is an
amazing thing and we had the support of the population.
The
Cégep de Rimouski voted no to the strike 3 weeks ago. I was happy to
get back to class, hoping that our actions would make a difference
and those still on strike would continue their peaceful
manifestation.
But
now I have the feeling that it went out of control and that we
deviated from our goal. People making injunctions to go back to class
and thus acting against democracy, people getting intimidated for
their choices, heinous messages over the Internet, people not
interested in the cause using the manifestations to wreak havoc in
the streets, policemen hurting protesters, it has to end.
Yesterday, La CLASSE and Line Beauchamp had a discussion and a truce
has been made. Let's hope an agreement will be possible some time
soon so the student crusade will end before something really bad
happen.
The strike showed me that
student still care for their studies and are willing to work together
for a noble cause. But starting to act more aggressively as the
impatience grows can lead to some dangerous situations, and how
quickly those who were in the losing side of a democratic decision
are made the bad guys.
The only thing that I
know for sure, is that we are shaping the Québec of tomorrow right
now, even the French (from France) medias are calling it "Le
printemps québecois", so let make the future generations proud
of the actions that we made.
I can't find the French new video about our strike anymore, so here's one of my favorite video. It's taken from the movie Up.
