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University Blockades: The “10/20 for Everyone”, Not Just an Urban Legend
For the past few weeks, minority groups of students have been blocking their universities in several cities across France. They are expressing their anger against Frédérique Vidal’s law on Student Orientation and Success, enacted on March 8th.
While the government defends a text that promotes “dialogue” between institutions and students, the latter denounce a disguised selection process for entry into higher education.
Will exams still take place? During this period of final exams, many are questioning the holding of exams in the blocked universities.
Students from several universities are demanding the automatic awarding of their semester, the “10/20 for everyone”!
Revolutionaries, yes, but always with the petty bourgeois comfort of acquired or guaranteed rights!!!
Since the escalation of tensions, the government is emphasizing the violence.
“We are at the university, the debate must take place. It is when there is violence that things need to be addressed and become unacceptable,” declared Frédérique Vidal, Minister of University and Research.
For Edouard Philippe, the Prime Minister, “There is a very strong hold by a segment of the student body, sometimes not even students, from the extreme left on the beginning of these movements with a form of violence.”
The movement is not likely to end soon. UNEF has called to amplify the movement against the law, while the Union of Communist Students, which praises ‘real demonstrations of strength’, is urging students to ‘not let their movement be crushed’.
The dates for upcoming mobilizations have already been announced. The National Student Coordination (CNE) is also calling students to demonstrate on April 14th “in conjunction with the railway workers’ strike” and to “join the national strike day on April 19th.”
A new CNE assembly is scheduled to take place on April 21st and 22nd to prepare for the continuation of the movement.
Students or pseudo-revolutionaries?
