I graduated from the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) in 2020, the year the pandemic began. In this context, I was happy (and relieved) to be able to find a job when I left school. For two years, and systematically when I meet Quebec colleagues and compatriots on Zoom, in the midst of a majority of Canadians outside Quebec, I face the same reflection on their part. This famous: “Did you study at UQAM? ! » With emphasis and disdain on the word « UQAM ».
Yes, I studied at UQAM. ” Oh yeah ? ! The Anglos are panicking: what is UQAM? Why this reaction? Systematically, my Quebec colleagues explain: “All the time on strike”, “Communists”, “Nonsense”.
These stereotypes coming from people who did not study at UQAM, I understand them, in a sense. When the media pays attention to UQAM, it is rarely for its pedagogical prowess, its internationally renowned faculty or its unique interdisciplinary programs. More often than not, attention is given to an extremist and hateful minority that uses its student status and hides behind this university establishment to get people talking about it.
But for me, UQAM was not just anything. It was to follow exciting courses and be guided by extraordinary teachers. It was having the opportunity to gain experience in research and teaching. It was participating in the National Model United Nations and overcoming my fear of public speaking. It was volunteering with students who took the time to inform and educate me about the climate crisis, with kindness.
It was also talking with other students with values diametrically opposed to mine, with curiosity and respect (and a few clashes, let’s be honest), but never with hatred. It was meeting people who were in the same boat as me: minorities, from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds, who had, in addition to studying full time, one (or more) job or internship, or associative commitments, or all of that at the same time.
For us, going to university, when there is a much higher than average dropout rate in our respective communities, is like climbing a mountain. We had struggled to get to the higher cycle, but we wanted to succeed together. In fact, we were everything that the student associations, which make a big noise about the class struggle, intersectionality, feminism and the defense of religious and ethnic minorities, liked and wanted to “help”. However, we were unanimously against their ideas, their extremist speeches and their redundant practices of strikes which put the sticks in the wheels for us.
In a word, it is paradoxical. This noisy minority says it wants to help vulnerable populations without listening to them when they shout at them to stop.
Unfair student governance
It is a noisy minority that decides to paralyze the campus and bring down 30,000 striking students, not the entire Uqamian campus. It is the same minority that vandalized the premises of the Student Association of the Political Science Module (AEMSP) a few days ago. Precisely, it takes an assembly of 200 people and a majority vote in favor of a strike for it to be deployed. It takes even fewer people to ransack a student room in the name of a “wokisme” to which their actions do not respond. It is 200 people who decide to turn the lives of thousands of students upside down, a silent majority, so named during a counter-movement led by students from the Faculty of Communication at UQAM after the announcement of a strike. general unlimited in winter 2019.
This silent majority must continue to denounce the violent actions and the student governance system that is not representative of the Uqamian community.
Actions that delegitimize Wokism
Questioning, fighting, it is necessary. But as activist and author Mariame Kaba has written so well, activism is synonymous with creation, not destruction: “When you see people calling themselves revolutionaries, they always talk about destroying, destroying, and destroying… but never talk about building or creating. They are not revolutionary. They understand nothing of the revolution which is: to create. »
Be woke, by definition, is caring about social justice, being aware of your own racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic biases, you name it. It is caring about the other and questioning their beliefs, their actions, their words, and wondering if we are hurting others. “Wokism” is above all compassion, and the creation of a common space to educate and dialogue with respect. It is not synonymous with destruction.
It is the continuous search for solutions to make our society inclusive, until our dysfunctional institutions for marginalized communities fall into disuse and these new inclusive models advocate. These actions, which are called woke only give material to the far right to discredit those who genuinely fight for marginalized communities.
This noisy minority is not UQAM
I am proud to be Uqamian, of my university, of the people I had the chance to meet on the benches of UQAM, of their resilience and their audacity. I am proud of the silent majority who denounce more and more people who say they are against oppression, for “freedom”, but who themselves oppress without deigning to listen to the voice of the greatest number.
This noisy minority is not UQAM, and it is not a fair representation of its student body and faculty. Our university and faculty governance grants too much power to student associations. To give so much power to a vocal minority is to give it the opportunity to damage the reputation and work of an entire university community. It is time that the problems arising from the student governance of UQAM be named and that this governance be restructured.