L i n d e n BREAKS RECORD
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Tariq Jeeroburkhan
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Stephanie Levitz
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V O L U M E
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R A LLY FOR LOW ER TRANSIT FEES
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ISSUE
O c t o b e r
8
1998
S tu d e n t d e m o n s tr a tio n t a r g e t s fe d e ra l c u ts t o e d u c a tio n By A
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O ve r 500 post-secondary Quebec stu dents participated in a rally last Thursday in Montreal to protest Finance Minister Paul Martin’s proposed cuts to education. The rally was organized by the Canadian Federation of Students, an organization which represents 400,000 Canadian students belong ing to 60 different student unions. C FS orga nized a “ W eek of A c tio n ” last week that included the rally and was intended to be the first step towards a student strike in February. The C FS has contingents in eight provinces, which planned similar acts of protest. M cG ill students gathered at the Roddick Gates where they joined students from the Université de Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal and Concordia to parade through downtown to the Stock Exchange building near old Montreal. A n n a K ru z y n s k i, a m em ber of the M c G ill A c tio n C o m m itte e , the group involved in organizing the M cG ill undergrad uate arm of the rally, explained the symbolic significance of the Stock Exchange. “It is the epitome of the neo-liberal ideol ogy these days and it is symbolic of the way that the corporate sector is taking over educa tion and society in general,” she explained. T h e ra lly was an act o f opposition against Martin’s cuts which, if implemented, will result in increased post-secondary tuition fees and further reduced government funding for education. The purpose of the rally was to draw attention to the harmful ramifications of the present education budget and to empha size the need to reform it. Th e protesters demanded an increase in federal transfer pay ments to the provincial governments, a freeze on tuition that prohibits universities from tacking on additional fees to their tuition and the issuing of federal grants to students, rather
than loans. Students w ho attended the ra lly expressed a fear of shrinking accessibility and the eventual privatization of M cGill. “Education should be free to anybody no matter what social class you come from," said Amanda Smith, one of the M c G ill students who attended the rally. "Loans are not the answer. H o w can you w a lk out w ith a $30,000 debt and have a good start on the world? M ost people I know who walk out with a B .A . end up with a minimum wage job and they have this $30,000 debt hanging over their head.”
Government cuts significant B e n o it Renaud, c o -o rd in a to r o f the Quebec component of the C FS, feels that the consequences of the government’ s cuts are already becoming obvious. "For one, we have more students in each class and classes are less and less given by actual teachers, more often by teaching assis tants and contract teachers. There are fewer resources in libraries and labs," said Renaud. "So, basically the lack of funding forces uni versities to reduce the quality of all the ser vices required for a university education and at the same time imposing new and higher fees to compensate for the lack of funding." Renaud added that “the overall demands are the same” among the different compo nents of the federation “ but in Quebec the goal is to have a real tuition freeze.” The freeze was supposed to be implemented in 1994, but since then several miscellaneous fees have been imposed which raised tuition. Although the Students' Society of M cG ill University is not affiliated with C F S , Jeff
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Stu dents r e fu s e to b e ta k e n p r is o n e r s by d e b t a t CFS D ay o f Action. G u errilla R eb e cca Catching t h e a tr e t r o o p ta r g e t th e b a n k s on M cGill College.
Exhibit ch ron icles d estru ctio n an d salvation o f th e M ilton-Parc a re a By C
h r is
S elley
D id you ever w onder what was at Parc and P rince A rth u r before La Cité? Imagine that inter section, now dom inated by the aforem entioned behemoth, sur rounded by the Victorian architec ture of Hutchison, Jeanne-Mance and Ste-Famille Streets. This, and
the controversy which surrounded the area's radical transformation, is the subject of a fascinating display of photographs, entitled Milton
Parc Avant, Pendant et Après. In fact, the entire area La Cité now occupies was, until the 1970s, a thriving community of students, lower-middle-class workers, wel fare recipients and others. Th e
prosperity of the 1950s and 60s had led the city of Montreal to believe that its population might eventually top six m illion. Enfer Concordia Estates, a company which, in 1962, began to buy up property in the area around Milton and Parc. The plan was to demolish all the old houses in the block formed by des Pins to the north, M ilto n to the
south, Ste-Famille to the east and Hutchison to the west, and to erect a massive complex of buildings-. La Cité was to only be phase one; the c ity hoped that 5 0,000 people might eventually live in the new "neighbourhood." W h at resulted instead was massive public outcry from the area's residents. Demonstrations,
Restaurant Place Milton
NICK and his staff' invite McGil students to the new! B r e a k f a s t expanded Restaurant^ S t e a k s a n d Place Milton. Stop by, ^ pick up your breakfast! card and say
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Serving McGill FStudents since M 964.
S a n d w ic h e s ,
s e le c tio n s
p e n :
sit-ins, even hunger strikes man aged to convince major corpora tions to withdraw their financial support from Concordia Estates. The photo exhibit documents not ju s t the areas w h ic h were destroyed, but the people who lived there, the demolition of the build ings, the demonstrations and the
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