This past spring break, the HCC honors students embarked on the opportunity to take an educational trip to Montreal, Canada. While taking a tour of the esteemed McGill University, they received many warnings from students commenting “Don’t come here!” and “It’s not worth it!”, under the impression that the group would be future students that would attend.
Once they completed their tour, the Honors College class went to the university’s art museum. As they were leaving the museum cars began to flood the roads in standstill traffic and commotion from a couple blocks away had streets blocked off. The honors class made their way toward the disturbance and were greeted by police in cars and on horses.
Once they broke through the crowds, they witnessed students passing around a microphone and loudly protesting their grievances out of large speakers on the back of the truck; partly in French but mostly in English. Shouting out their negative feelings toward how the distribution of government funding has gone, their affliction with the office workers who are taking money from the schools, and the financial mistreatment of immigrant and minority students.
Not sure of their organization of origin of the problem, but as they presented their case very well they then proceeded to instruct everyone to create a ruckus for the nearby financial institutions to let them know their displeasure with their decisions. People took turns sharing their experiences as immigrant or minority students. Once the crowd gave their final hoorah, they began marching down the streets of Montreal shouting and chanting. More and more people began to join and take up entire streets.
Surprisingly the police seemed to support their rights by soliciting them part of the streets and protecting them from traffic. Making sure that the protesters were safe and not causing public distress or damage.
