The sorry fact of the matter is that with only one third of students in Quebec left on strike, we should hope these vandals would stay out of university. After all, that would increase the likelihood of actual students finding employment after graduation. Students who instead of donning cowardly, immature masks, actually want to be working.
On Wednesday, Quebec's education minister resigned claiming she was no longer helping to solve the problems. Her admission is honest, introspective and poignant, but above all, it is something an adult would do. Conversely, as the protests continue, violence and vandalism has become increasingly commonplace as protesters become ever more uncompromising and antagonistic.
Two quiet professors in yesterday's Globe and Mail drew upon that rarest resource in opinion writing (actual evidence). They noted one of the great unspoken truths about post-secondary education in Canada: the leading variable determining whether kids attend university or not is usually cultural pressure within one's social class -- not cost. For some reason, asking university-educated journalists to analyze politically active university students rarely yields these sorts of conclusions, however.
Once again, the boycotting students took to the streets of Montreal last night in protest of tuition hikes. Once again, Montrealers are subject to broken glass and a shattered downtown core. And once again, the student leaders of the organization refuse to take any responsibility or action for what they have unleashed on our beautiful city.
During this past Thursday's protests about tuition fees, Montreal's students found another foe worthy of their vociferous appeals to the masses: student scabs, who they claimed did not have the right to cross picket lines and go to classes. The protesters may indeed have 99 legitimate problems, but just to be clear, a scab isn't one.