No School For You

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to write about: strikes in France.
If you don’t already know, both transportation and student strikes are very popular in France; on average they happen about every 3 months. In October, there was a TCL strike (TCL represents all the metros, trams, and buses in Lyon, maybe everywhere in France for that matter, but that I don’t know). Not all of the metros, trams and buses were included in the strike, but some were, meaning they either came significantly less frequently or they didn’t come at all. This happened when I was living in St-Genis-Laval, and the only possible way I could get to school/into town was the 10 bus, and the 10 bus was on strike. That was only for one day.

About a week and a half ago, SNCF (which represents all the trains in France) decided to go on strike. It was virtually impossible to get a train anywhere in or out of the country. This was the case for a few days. Since then it’s gotten better, but it’s not over.

The same time that the SNCF strike started up, so did a student strike. In a nutshell, Lyon decided to privatize the university system, so the tuition to attend Université Lumière Lyon 2 (my school) is going up from basically free (200 euros a year) to 500 euros a year for French students. I know: 500 euros a year. I wish these students could spend a day in the shoes of almost everyone I know attending a four year university in the States, I really do. To pay 500 euros a year would be amazing, a cause for celebration, but evidently it couldn’t be farther from that for the French. So anyway, as a result, the students at my University, all last week and so far this week as well, have been literally blockading my school. They have literally been putting tables and chairs in front of all the entrances to the school and standing around them in huge groups, not letting anybody in. Professors, students… everyone. And as a result of this, I have not had school for the past week and a half. I couldn’t go to class if I wanted to. It is insane. And apparently it’s entirely NORMAL for this to happen here! It’s really quite amazing; this could never ever ever happen in the States! And not that I don’t enjoy having the free time, but I’m getting a bit bored, and more importantly, I’m starting to worry even more about being able to pass my classes if there’s bound to be so much catching up to do. Also, I don’t really agree with what the students are doing here. It’s one thing to go on strike and say that you’re not going to attend class as a form of protest, but it’s another to stop everyone else from going to classes if they want to. Yesterday, our program director wasn’t entirely sure if classes wouldn’t be going on so Amanda and I decided to try and go to our (horrible) 19th century French Lit class. We had to walk all the way around the building to secretly enter a side door because of course all the main entrances were blocked. On our way there, we ran into our professor for the class. We asked her if we had class today and she seemed baffled that we would even ask such a thing. As if she wanted to say, “Of course not you silly Americans, haven’t you ever been in a student blockading strike before?” Instead she said, “Ben… non.” Which is the equivalent of “Well uh… no,” and she told us that she wasn’t sure when we’d have it again.

After that, I needed to go to Centre Oregon to use the internet (the reason I do not yet have it in my apartment is long and unimportant for the purposes of this blog, but I WILL have it within the next week and a half, for sure). I had to go through a mass of protesters to get there. This was NOT easy. There were actually people physically blocking other people from going through this outdoor archway. One guy tried to jump over a table and a protester grabbed him and shoved him back. I was so frustrated, and honestly somewhat scared, so I just yelled, in English. “I’m not trying to go to class, I just want to go to my FUCKING program office, let me THROUGH!” The bad news is a lot of people turned to look at me and it was pretty embarrassing. But the good news is it totally worked! Someone even kind of helped me weave through everyone. And today, on my way to Centre Oregon, there were much less people (actually only about 5) blocking the way, and all I had to say was “Hi, I’m American.” I started to say “Can I go?” after that, but I didn’t even need to, they immediately moved aside and said “Ah oui oui, oui oui oui…” They even looked kind of NERVOUS about it, like I was some kind of authority figure (not that they give a shit about any actual authority figures here). This will probably be one of the only times, if not the only, where “American” is the magic word.

Anyway, no one is sure when this will end. And it’s not like I could travel anywhere with all this free time because of the SNCF strike! Apparently two years ago, they had one of these that lasted for an entire month. People say that this one will probably be over after this week, but who knows. C’est la vie, I suppose…