Quebec Students: Staying on Message

This morning in Montreal, as-yet unidentified parties threw smoke bombs onto the subway tracks in three stations, shutting down all three major subway lines and effectively stranding thousands of commuters. This has happened twice before in the last few weeks and in both instances the perpetrators were related to the students protesting the Provincial Government's proposed increase in university tuition fees.

At the same time as this was going on, I was reading (on the subway platform before I had to leave and find a bus) a Harper's essay (sorry - no link; it's not posted yet on their site) about the monumental rise in tuition fees at U.S. universities that have occured over the past 30 years. The conclusions reached by the author are that universities in the U.S. are really about getting rich, providing the goods to participate in the 'knowledge economy' and that students must be made to pay for this privelege (the average annual tuition bill for an Ivy League university in the U.S. is US$40,000.00. If you include room and board, it's US$54,000.00.). By requiring students to pay a hefty price - and accumulate a huge debt load - students in such institutions do not become enlightened about the ways of world, but rather, arrive at the knowledge that they've been screwed. There's even the story of the Ph.D. student who, after obtaining her degree and realizing that the salary for an adjunct professor was so insignificant, decided to become a high-end escort to Wall street types, basically providing sexual services to the guys who lent her the money to get her degree.

So, how are the events in the Montreal subway and the Harper's article related?

The students in Montreal are protesting hikes in tuition that they say would lead to a situation that has occured in the United States. They are raising legitimate questions around university financing and the use of those funds in providing educational services. I certainly see the role of universities being larger than churning out students who feel entitled to become rich. And for that, I salute them. They've done far more to get the public's attention than the government, which, frankly, has dropped the ball on the whole issue for the sake of political expediency.

However, the student movement is being hijacked by opportunistic vagabonds and hooligans, who see any large protest (and Montreal has its share) as an opening to wreak havoc in public places. I don't think that shutting down the subway system in Montreal for an hour is going to endear those commuters to the student's cause as it distracts the public's attention away from the arguments raised by the students.

The students need to stay on message so they can get the public on side. Smoke bombs won't do it.

As for the subway, I think I'll take my bike the next time to get to work.