Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Strikes and Anarchy -- uh, I mean Anarchists



I think the anarchists have achieved their purpose. Anarchy is definitely reigning at the University.

All joking aside, I honestly can't keep track of all the protests, strikes, work stoppages, and occupations taking place at the University. Between them all, it's a wonder any work gets done at all (wait, no work does get done).

The anarchists left the Theology School after about a week and it was reopened two days later. (Crews had to clean up the damage and filth the anarchists had left, including their destruction/desecration of the building's chapel and icons.)

About two days after it reopened, the students held another vote on whether to join most of the rest of the schools in the University in an occupation (translation: no one goes to class). The Theology School had been one of the few holdouts (shortly before the anarchists took over anyway). Of course, the students who were allowed to vote now voted to join the occupation, so the building was closed again.

In between all this, I forgot to mention, the school secretaries and teachers also went on strike (I'm not sure if these were separate strikes or if they agreed to join together in not working.)

Interestingly (and not at all surprising), the government still pays these government employees when they go on strike for better wages. (Hmm, they get paid to not work and argue for more pay? Why would they ever not be on strike, you may be asking yourself. Good question.)

All this is just a sideshow to us in the School of Modern Greek. I'm not sure why, but none of it affects us, even though we're somehow part of the University (and located right in the middle of campus). Maybe it's because we actually pay for our education.

Anyway, as we walked across campus today after class to go to the student cafeteria, we somehow found ourselves in the middle of a student protest parade. (See photos above.) I'm not exactly sure what I was protesting, but I was in there.

1 comment:

Panimatka Philo said...

Yes!

Can't stop giggling...

+Jesse