Translating the printemps érable

Émilie Bilodeau & Gabrielle Duchaine          August 7, 2012

Original French Text: http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/dossiers/conflit-etudiant/201208/06/01-4562844-greve-les-etudiants-passent-au-vote.php

Monday night [August 6], Students of Social Services at Université de Montréal (UdeM) were the first to decide whether to restart the student strike.  Rather than return to classes on August 27, members of the student association (AÉSSUM) decided to continue their strike.  

After two and a half hours of assembly, 33 students voted in favour of restarting the strike, and 26 voted against, with 2 abstentions.  9.6% of students participated in the vote.  

For Blandine Parchemal, who represents the Media Commitee of the UdeM strike committee, this first bodes well for the student movement.  ”They have a reputation of being more moderate,” she said.  ”At UdeM, votes don’t always pass with strong majorities.”

As in previous votes, student interns are not affected by the strike.  The student association, made up of 638 members, will next address the issue of continuing the strike on September 7.  

General assemblies are planned for the whole upcoming week.   On Tuesday, 3600 students at Cégep Marie-Victorin and 4623 humanities students at UQAM will decide the issue for themselves.  

Profs against the increase

Elsewhere, teachers from many schools have promised to respect the students’ strike votes, predicting that there will be thousands of teachers who refuse to force students back into classes.  Some 200 professors and teachers of CEGEPs and universities met at UQAM on Monday to present a manifesto, signed by 2000 teaching professionals from all over the world.  In it, they denounce bill 78 (known today as law 12), which they say is “mean-spirited” and which they call “a liberticide.”  The signatories refuse to be made to apply a law they do not agree with: “We do not see ourselves as mere agents of perpetuating the social order, and especially as not officers of the repression with which Quebec’s state power has decided to contemptuously attack the student community.”

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Translated from the original French by Translating the printemps érable.

*Translating the printemps érable is a volunteer collective attempting to balance the English media’s extremely poor coverage of the student conflict in Québec by translating media that has been published in French into English. These are amateur translations; we have done our best to translate these pieces fairly and coherently, but the final texts may still leave something to be desired. If you find any important errors in any of these texts, we would be very grateful if you would share them with us at translatingtheprintempsderable@gmail.com. Please read and distribute these texts in the spirit in which they were intended; that of solidarity and the sharing of information.