So my school is on strike. It is kind of complicated though because my faculty is not on strike, but the school is. Let me try and explain.
The student association that represents all the undergrads held a General Assembly to vote on whether or not to strike. First off let me say it was the most biased General Assembly I've ever been to. The majority of people in attendance were pro strike, the vote was held by a show of hands (which definitely made it hard for some people to vote against the majority) and less than 5% of the students turned up to vote. It was also very
unorganized, microphones were working and they tried to ustream it but it kept going in and out which delayed the G.A.
The general atmosphere of the auditorium felt like some kind of retreat. Lol it gave off the vibe that we all should have joined hands and sing Kumbaya. This may sound ignorant as f^ck but I felt like I was surrounded by a bunch of vegans that drink their juice from recycled spaghetti sauce jars and dressed in hemp. Someone was literally playing the banjo. While waiting for the assembly to start I was listening to hypothetical conversations of what is going to happen once we are on strike. The same theater student I tweet about on a regular basis were doing the same annoying shit they always do such as blowing bubbles in peoples faces like the are 5 years old. One guy was doing a monologue about.... I don't even know remember what it was about and there were a lot of emo people here. One girl started crying out of nowhere.
Anyway in the end they voted to go on strike. The numbers we overwhelming like 85% for and 10% against and 5% abstained. At the same time it was very biased because of the show of hands voting and less than 1500 people turned out to vote when there are over 30000 people who attend the school.
When the results were known it turned into a controversy because a lot of people expressed that they did not know about the vote and their main argument was that it was kept hidden from certain faculties because the people who run the student association wanted a particular result (Yes) and therefore it was heavily advertised to the faculties that would give that result (which has a bit of truth towards it because I did not hear a word about the strike on campus but I happen to watch the nightly news a few nights before and heard that apparently we were voting on whether to join the strike).
Because of this a few days later my faculty and another one held a separate closed ballot vote to decide if we were going to join the student association and strike. The results came back as 25% for, 75% against, <1% abstained. About 2500 people came out to vote out of about 12000 possible voters for my faculty.
That's how my school is on strike but not my faculty. So I did have to technically cross the picket line but I was not alone.
Students blocking a bridge during rush hour each later being fined $494.
