French high school and university student mobilization and campus blockades, Digi Mart USA News (France): Initial actions were under way on Tuesday morning outside high schools and universities in several regions of France, after unions called for a “black Tuesday.” Rallies were planned across the country during the day.
Many high school and university students were mobilized in front of their institutions on Tuesday morning. Unions had called for a “black day” with gatherings planned throughout France.
The student movement was expected to grow over the week, with a call to block universities and high schools on Tuesday ahead of a day of strikes on Thursday.
“The movement is not running out of steam,” said Alice de Brito, vice president of the Unef, on franceinfo on Monday. “The mobilization is meant to grow over the coming days,” she insisted.
Processions were scheduled during the day in several cities, including a 2 p.m. march in Paris, where the route initially filed by demonstrators had been banned.
According to the Ministry of Education, 48 high schools out of the roughly 3,700 in France were blocked at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, and the ministry said no disruption was recorded in three-quarters of departments.
On Monday, when students returned from the All Saints’ holiday, 41 institutions were blocked at the same hour, or 1% of establishments, according to the ministry. That figure was strongly disputed by the Union syndicale lycéenne (USL), which said it had counted 169 blocked high schools.
In Paris, a blockade was taking place on Tuesday morning in front of the Institute of Geography in the 5th arrondissement, according to a franceinfo journalist on site, with students from other sites of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne also participating, including those at the Pierre-Mendès-France center, known as “Tolbiac.” The 13th arrondissement site was not blocked that morning because the administration had closed it, according to a Tolbiac student, who denounced “a strategy to prevent the student mobilization” to franceinfo.
The Paris-Dauphine PSL university planned to stay closed until Thursday inclusive, its president, Bruno Bouchard, announced on RTL on Tuesday. Closed since Monday, the Sorbonne Nouvelle University also announced the closure of its Nation campus for the entire day.
In Paris, a student demonstration organized by the Interfac Île-de-France collective was scheduled for 2 p.m. The collective had wanted to march on Tuesday between the Panthéon and the headquarters of the Medef, but the prefecture vetoed the route and proposed a course on the outskirts, between the Charenton and Montreuil gates.
Speaking to ICI Normandie, Lamri Adoui, president of the University of Caen Normandy, announced a blockade on Tuesday morning of one of the university’s 15 campuses, the city-center campus (campus 1). Garbage bins and barriers were piled in front of the entrances by about thirty students, according to a journalist on site.
Mathias Bernard, president of the Clermont-Auvergne University, confirmed to ICI Pays d’Auvergne that blockades continued at three sites: La Rotonde, Carnot and Gergovia. They had already been blocked on Monday and before the holidays.
Bernard observed “a movement that is not weakening,” with a “beginning of a blockade” also reported Tuesday morning at the Cézeaux campus.
In Marseille, several high school blockades were under way, according to ICI Provence, at Saint-Charles (1st arrondissement), Thiers (1st), Jacques-Chirac (2nd), Marie-Curie (6th) and Marseilleveyre (8th). A demonstration was scheduled from 10:30 a.m.
A procession was also set to leave at 2 p.m. in Metz.
In Strasbourg, the prefecture decided to ban “protest” gatherings around 11 high schools in the city for one week.
In Rennes, from 7:30 a.m., tensions rose between an administrator and about thirty students who, as on the previous day, tried to block the Bréquigny high school, the largest in Brittany. At 8 a.m., after a brief police presence, the entrance was blocked by students, according to AFP.
In Toulouse, a few dozen students brought garbage bins to the entrance of the Toulouse-Lautrec high school, which the principal had previously refused to allow at that location.
Dissatisfied with measures announced by the ministers of Education and Higher Education, high school and student unions called for blockades of schools and universities to continue on Tuesday, with a demonstration planned in Paris at 2 p.m. The Union étudiante and the Union syndicale lycéenne called for blocking high schools and universities on Tuesday and the following Thursday, while a national intersyndical day is planned for November 5.
