I loved Concordia. Concordia was, for me, "Punk Rock U."
When I was there, at the downtown campus studying photography, you could smoke butts and drink beer while doing your reading in the cafeteria. Hell, some of my profs would even haul the occasional case into class. You could watch the cops from Station 25 get crazy with Sex Garage protests downstairs while the newly elected, dyke-dominated student council got crazy with the Concordia Student Union status quo upstairs. Unlike the demographic of my previous alma mater, the University of Western Ontario, I didn’t feel like I was stumbling through a daily Aryan nightmare, a rarefied and blond hair-ified world that the Third Reich – or perhaps Toronto’s Rosedale district – had secretly won.
And, if you were so inclined, you could also get an education, an education that extended well beyond the insular walls of the usual institutional experience. Which is what happens when you have a downtown campus that hugs the darkest heart of the Montreal bar scene, and your favourite local punk bands are playing three floors up from your film class.
Concordia had, and to a certain extent still has, a rep, such as it is. And more importantly, a history, though it’s not necessarily a history university administrators are keen to exploit. The university has long been a flashpoint for political activism and has the burns to show for it. Notably, the Computer Centre occupation and riot in 1969 over charges of racism at the university, which saw 97 people arrested and over $2-million in damage; the November, 1999 student strike, characterized by numerous demonstrations and clashes with police; and most recently the infamous Benjamin Netanyahu protests of 2002, which forced the cancellation of the Israeli prime minister’s appearance at the university after protesters clashed with riot police inside the lobby of the Hall Building.
Concordia is nothing if not colourful. That said…
In advance of anticipated province-wide student actions this year opposing the Charest government’s plan to drastically hike post-secondary tuition rates, Free Education Montreal, QPIRG Concordia, Uberculture and the People’s Campus Coalition are co-presenting a panel discussion entitled The Real History of Concordia: From Computer Riots to Corporatization. (At Concordia’s Hall Building, the CSU Lounge, 7th floor, on Jan. 19 from 4 to 6 p.m.). Consider it a rallying of the troops.
The panel features author and former Concordia student, union activist and political science professor David Bernans, Sabine Friesinger (president of the Concordia Student Union during the Netanyahu riot) and David Austin, co-founder of the Montreal-based Alfie Roberts Institute (which aims to effect positive social change within the black community).
"The event is intended to give Concordia students a sense of the history of the institution that they’re a part of," says Bernans, "because a lot of them probably weren’t even born when the Computer Centre riots happened, and a lot of them would have been pretty young when the Netanyahu riots took place – two of the watershed events in Concordia’s activist history. So this will look at how Concordia activism has shaped the university and continues to shape the university, and what part activism might play in the university’s future."
Bernans himself has something of a fascinating backstory, having at one time been the subject of some rather bizarre harassment and intimidation that he alleges took place at the hands of Concordia’s post-Netanyahu security apparatus following an attempted reading from his 2006 book, North of 9/11. The whole story, as told by Bernans, can be found at http://artthreat.net/2009/11/concordia-university-spied-novelist. Leave time for a shower afterwards.
A lot of what Bernans plans to focus on at the panel event centres around the importance of, and the loss of, student-identified space and how important it is for students to shape the university in their own image.
"Corporations are succeeding in shaping the university in their image because of the way that Concordia has [indulged] security and post-9/11 paranoia, and also for economic reasons, namely the need for funds from corporations that want to target students. What’s happened is that students used to mobilize in the lobby of the Hall Building. That’s where they mobilized against racism during the computer centre riots; that’s where we mobilized for the 1999 student strike.
"But at a certain point, following 9/11, the university said that students could no longer use that space. They said it was a fire hazard, but they also had all kinds of security concerns, especially with what the university considered to be an unholy alliance of anarchists and Palestinian activists on campus. So they blocked that space off to students, and then not long afterward gave it to Tim Horton’s.
"That’s what I’ll be talking about, and how students can challenge that and how it’s been challenged in the past… The space that’s been lost must be won back and the only way to do it is by taking it."
Worried that Concordia will try to shut down the event?
"I don’t know if I’m worried," says Bernans, not sounding very worried. "I think if they do try to shut it down we’ll just [starts laughing] have to take the space. If it doesn’t happen, I’m sure we’ll find another space. I think probably the university has learned its lesson in the past… in my case anyway. If they want to help us get publicity, [shutting the event down] is probably the best thing they could do."
6 comments
Having gone to Concordia at the same time that you did, I can vouch that it’s always been a bit of a “rebel” university. Being right in the core of the city helped, but so did it’s cultural diversity as compared to other schools in the city. Add to that the “outsider” status that it’s always felt due to the “mighty McGill” being so close to it, and you have a place that can’t help but be something that wants to scream out for attention.
Remember, Concordia is where students protested when they decided that they’d only stock Coke machines in the building – because it felt like the “man” was holding us down somehow.
The most controversial thing that happened while I was there, was when the (as you describe) “newly elected, dyke-dominated student council” decided to somehow poorly make a point by including gay pornography in the student handbook. As a result, a few years later students went completely anti-stance when they elected some guy who’s entire platform consisted of him running completely naked on his campaign posters. Later on he admitted that he did the whole thing as “performance art” – weirdly, he was one of the best council leaders they ever had.
As for the school cancelling the former Israeli PM’s visit, it was a smart decision. In a school where the administration FUBAR’d the Fabrikant situation so badly, there’s no way they could have ever handled the situation that would brew between every Middle Eastern group in the school, there’s just no way.
Concordia – I loved it then, I love it now. It’s a place where the education doesn’t stop at the classroom door.
Concordia’s rep definitely precedes it. Politics have always been de rigeur there – all kinds of clubs and associations all with their own conflicting agendas competing with each other for attention, funds and influence. It can be a bit much at times, especially if you not into either social or political activism. Mind you, in stark contrast, there’s always McGill. This staid bastion of higher learning and the past/future captains of industry isn’t politically incorrect (or remotely controversial) in any way, shape or form – pretty much the antithesis of Concordia in it’s relative blandness and tony conservatism. Regardless of where you go, both offer up an engaging academic (and in Concordia’s case especially) and unique socio-political learning experience!
Concordia University is way tamer than it used to be – that’s what happens when corporate interests trump everything else. Riots and mass protests even more politically correct expressions of dissent like pickets and sit-ins are few and far between nowadays. All the same, it’s nice to know that they’re still people keeping that spirit of political awareness alive even as they pay homage to Concordia’s own storied and turbulent past.
Long time has gone by since the last time I stepped a foot on Concordia’s ground. I was there during the Netanyahu’s protest, cluless completly from any political agenda, political awareness was defenetly not in my being. However, something after that day really changed not only in me but in all of the current alumni, it moved us either left or right or both but lots of things changed.
Seing the mezz as the most enlightening area, before and even more after the protest, of the whole University, I felt proud to teach my 1st daughter how to walk there. The protest inspire the birth of many associatios including the Mexican one which gave us the opportunity to bring a bunch of inner and external associations concerned about Latin America’s problems together. The most non-political students, us the Mexican-Latinos in general, decided to speak up and take action in an amazing story. We got involved in with other associations, commities, in our faculties and even in council, we started the fight against the raising of tuition fees for international students…
It was so fulfilling to see Sergio and Patrick with their Camara’s, Tara and Steph trying to mediate the maddness, and obviously Sabine, Patrice, Ives, K. Childs, Trish, Slatter, the Noa’s, Naomi, Samer, Natalie Pomerleau, Woordsworth, Patrice, Reid, Bouchard, Teblum, Ralph, Laith, Ralph, Beck, Farrington, etc… Pursuing everyday an agenda, awaring people of situations from different perspectives, it’s sad to read where Concordia has gone, sad to see that the kids that today are sitting where we did, will never come even close to the experiences we as students had and still remains in each of us wherever we might be.
Keep up raising your/our voices you are in the right space where life-world-changes happen, where the real change takes place!!!
Well Concordia’s always had a pretty colorful reputation for better or worse. It’s long been a hotbed/flashpoint for political activism and/or unrest. Of course that has a lot to do with it’s inclusive multicultural demographic that all too often finds one ethnic group at odds with another (case in point the whole Netenyahu debacle which further polarized the already tenuous relations between Jewish and Palestinian students). Notwithstanding this unfortunate incident, most of the political dissent is, thankfully, of a more conscientious than acrimonious nature which allows for the dissemination of competing ideologies and the free and unfettered exchange of ideas. Even if you’re not terribly politically active, the atmosphere at Concordia makes for a pretty vibrant and vital place to learn and grow both academically and if you’re so inclined, politically too!
Concordia prides itself on being different. On November 20, 1969 as a new student at Loyola High School I saw first hand the shards of broken glass at a heavily damaged building on the grounds of nearby Loyola College which was caused by an FLQ bomb. In the eyes of these terrorists one of the founding members of Concordia University was deemed just as guilty as other Anglophone institutions of subjugating and suppressing the francophone majority. The fact that Loyola was a Catholic institution with Jesuit traditions with few ties to rich industrialists was immaterial. It was ironic that I was busy donating my much needed blood at St-Luc Hospital on August 24, 1992 the same day a blood bath was occurring at the engineering faculty of Concordia University where 4 professors were to die. Years earlier I was even accepted into that faculty but chose another discipline. Concordia cannot stay inside its own cocoon and ignore what is happening around it. Every taxpayer in the province of Quebec including myself helps support in a small way this university. Whether they are federalists or separatists, English speaking or French speaking they have little influence in how tax dollars reserved for education get spent. The fact that a smaller percentage of francophones have university degrees is often a sore point. Accepting so many francophone students could even be construed as poaching. Even with research grants and generous contributions from benefactors and former graduates Concordia needs friendly relations with the provincial government and the community at large to ensure continued funding to attract the best students and faculty. I am proud to be a Concordia graduate but am dismayed by all the petty politics including the recent forced resignations of 2 presidents.