Greek Students Lead Riot at Quebec University

A team of Greek students organized and enforced a riot to take place in a university in Canada defying the anti-protest legislation that has passed in Quebec this month. They are protesting over amendments in the tuition costs regulation.

On Wednesday, a masked enforcement squad swept through the campus at the Université du Québec à Montréal, hunting for students who showed up for class. Wherever they found a class in session, they broke in and shouted “Scab!” in the students’ faces. The enforcement squad was defying a court injunction that ordered the university to open.

According to the Canadian press, Greek students were the ones to organize the riot and it was reported that they also jumped on desks and tables and spray-painted slogans on the classroom walls.

“These masked young men and women are the children of the celebrated Quebec model, which shares a certain mindset with the not-so-celebrated Greek model. The state owes us everything, and if we don’t get it, we’ll riot in the streets!,” reports The Globe and Mail.

The writer of the respective article considers the rioting unjustified and unacceptable, as “The government subsidizes their tuition costs by $60,000 to $75,000 over the course of their undergraduate careers,” according to Carleton University’s Archibald Ritter. “Few will ever have to stint on mochaccinos, or work with their hands. I’d feel sorry for them if unemployment among young adults was 50 percent, as it is in Spain. In fact, their job prospects are among the best in the world.”

Greeks in Greece have the right to participate in riots and demand what the government deprives them from, admits the writer. But in Quebec, there are not such risks for students even if they come from Greece. They have a promising future ahead of them, so such riots shouldn’t occur.

(Source: the globe and mail)