Translating the printemps érable

August 17, 2012

Original French Text: https://www.facebook.com/isabelle.baez.5/posts/10151070332039545

Please share this information. 

This morning, the administration of CEGEP du Vieux-Montréal asked its teachers to give a failing grade to all students if the strike motion passes this morning. We are not talking about the cancellation of the semester, but rather of an individual failing grade. I have verified this with the administration, as I didn’t believe that such a measure was applicable. Well, it is. The administration’s reason: the [Education] minister informed us that the semester couldn’t be cancelled because that would mean no money, the complete disappearance of  the 2012 winter cohort, and this would put the CEGEP in a bad position. 

So in summary: 

 - for six months, students were threatened with a cancellation which, for all intents and purposes, was impossible. 

- an administration can undergo such pressure on the part of the government and not call a press conference or publish any public statement whatsoever denouncing this pressure. 

- a CEGEP’s administration can suspend classes in order for students to vote FREELY (who is being mocked here?) today in the midst of such a climate of fear. 

I would bet you that it would be a completely different scenario, of course, if following a vote to return to class today, a petition for a new assembly were to circulate on Monday. 

As my poster stated today: YES to student democracy, NO to the fear campaign orchestrated by the government and the CEGEP’s administration. 

**Rectification: the administration itself would attribute the failing grade. Where there is inconvenience…

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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.