Live report from French student: 3, the actual crime
So, I woke up to discover those students had blocked the “mother Sorbonne”. A group was inside and had prevented the classes from happening. Alright, noted. But then I also heard that the staff and direction of the university had decided to block all entries and exits of the mother Sorbonne site. I was a bit confused... They closed the other sites nearby to avoid the “fire spreading” and other manifestations blocking other buildings, okay that I got, smart move because it is what screwed us over before.
[And in fact, an aside here, but a lot of students are unhappy with these blockings because this was our last week of study and classes before the exams, so all the good advice, last-minute reviews, before-the-exams warning we could have had are now taken away, and the time we could have had to train with teachers ig one - notably because due to the blocking spreading over several days, and the students intending to manifest until the next election round, the whole week was cut off. LOTS of students unhappy.]
But yes I was a bit confused by the fact people kept saying “the students blocked the Sorbonne” and “The Sorbonne blocked the students”. It was unclear who had blocked who, who was keeping the doors and entries closed.
Turned out, it was both. Students had sneaked up in the Sorbonne Wednesday afternoon to make their block. But by Thursday, the Sorbonne staff had decided to block all entries and passages not only to prevent students from going in the Sorbonne, but also to prevent the students inside from going OUT. It was a true siege, the blocking students stuck inside the building, with no way to supply themselves on food or drinks, until they gave up. (Mind you there’s plenty of food inside, after all it is a university, but still). I was quite a bit surprised - though I do understand why the reaction would be so vivid and violent. The mother Sorbonne is a historical building, a true monument, and you don’t just do anything you want with it. Reactions are bound to be harsher than on other side-sites much more recent and less valuable.
Ultimately the students were evacuated when they surrendered (I think it was the night between Thursday and Friday). But it was only then we actually discovered what had happened that actually pissed off so much the people of the Sorbonne, and even other members of the student manifestation. Heavy, heavy degradations.
You see, when the blocking group first got inside the Sorbonne, they were quite big, and there was a wide mix of left-oriented political ideologies. But soon the most extreme members of the group stood out by their desire to destroy everything they found. It went to the point that most of the left-oriented and moderate students left the blocking in disgust (before the university put the whole siege situation). So the ones that blocked through the night and led the siege were actually a group of full-blown anarchists, and proud to be so. In fact there were people among there that clearly were not students and did not belong in any ways to the Sorbonne, who were just here to pass a political message by using and hiding among the students.
And the results of the university blocked actually forced the staff of the university to block it for reparations (one site got hit so badly it won’t finish the year and will only re-open next year). We are talking about lots of windows smashed ; we are talking of computers thrown out of the window that needs to be repaired ; we are talking about thesis stolen from offices and shred to pieces ; we are talking about graffitis and buckets of paints thrown over centuries-old walls and furnitures, we are talking about hallway littered with garbage. And even worse than that... they got into the library. The oldest, biggest university libraries of Paris. Being extremists and hard anarchists with no actual interest or care for academies and studies, you can guess what happened. A lot of rare editions, a lot of precious books, were destroyed or damaged beyond repair.
One person pointed out yet again the self-destructive irony of this kind of behavior. Those anarchists and extreme-leftists claimed they manifested to have “the little people be given rights and a better lfe”, to defend the “common people’s too harsh conditions and menial jobs”. But guess who will be forced to clean up all the garbage you threw in the halls? Guess who will need to scrub and scrub your graffities and paintings? Guess who has now to clean up your shit behind you. The very same people I see every day at the Sorbonne emptying the trash cans, washing the floors, cleaning the rooms. They made life a lot harsher and harder for a group belonging to the same class of people they try to defend.
So yeah, this is why I am honestly quite pissed off. I don’t care if they stupid or what kind of ideology they represent. But when you start degrading and breaking down cultural monuments for no good reason, and worse, when you start destroying books that will never be found anywhere else, well there’s clearly something wrong with you.
And this morning, it pissed me off SO MUCH to see a so-called “representant” of the student manifestation movement saying on television “The universities were closed because they don’t want the people to speak! The university staff pretends it wants to help the life of students, but in truth it refuses democratic dialogue! If they close the university sites, it is just so we can’t express ourselves!”.
No you idiot. They close the sites because a bunch of crazy anarchists was destroying centuries-old treasures and just wanted to break down everything they touched. They shut the doors because there’s already a lot of euros worth of damage and the hard work of a lot of people was entirely lost. They don’t want you to not speak, this has nothing to do with “shutting youth up”, you self-centered little prick. Even worse: this has nothing to do with democracy, you shithead. Blocking a university because your candidate didn’t get enough vote ; destroying books because French people favor one political wing over another ; screwing with the studies of thousands and thousands of teenagers and young adults just because you want the world to know you’re angry, that’s not democracy. This has nothing to do with democracy at all.
But what can I say... as a student among students, it is very sad to see that all “political” students in big French cities actually tend to be extremely dumb, and to not understand the own words they speak. Nowadays, whenever someone is prevented from breaking stuff down, they scream that “democracy is not respected”. They don’t get that democracy is entirely working on respecting the most popular opinions and working to change them - it is not about throwing a destructive tantrum because people don’t agree with you.
Anyway I just needed to get my bile out of there. Honestly it is the books that got me. The rest I could have just endured with the usual bitterness and angriness I keep for those kind of events. But the library books being destroyed? This just supports what I could observe in my five years at looking at university students: those that shout the loudest are also the stupidest of them all.
