Chapter 97: Bordelle

nerd blog post #103

I wanted to nerd blog sooo much earlier this week, but my compy is on the fritz and I've been using Cynthia's. But now I'm in Paris.

The reason I wanted to write so badly is that this week was CRAZY at school. I have literally never EVER in my LIFE seen so many crazy things happen. And in this post, I will recount the madness of the week. The title of this blog is a new vocabulary word that I learned here in France (I may be spelling it wrong - I don't write in French slang too often). It has become one of my faves. It means messy, and can be used for a messy room or situation. In Quebec they use a different, equally fun word, for the same thing. Anyways..

I arrived at work on Tuesday morning and started teaching the two students I had in the language laboratories. Ten minutes into class or so, security barged in and told us to evacuate the classroom immediately. So we did.

I went down to the department and joined the dozen or so profs and secretaries who were staring out of the big window in the staffroom. Outside, in the middle of the campus, the blockaders were piling furniture. I texted Cynthia to bing my camera and then wandered outside to see what was going on. The blockaders were entering classrooms and amphitheatres and forcing the class out. But not with violence. They had accordians and recorders and morrocas and garbage tin lids and washboards. They stood in the classrooms by the dozens, playing their songs and singing and clapping until the prof gave up and the students became frustrated and the classroom emptied out. Then they would steal all the furniture and put it outside in the bordelle.

The pile consisted of about two hundred desks and tables, pulpits, bulletin boards, about fifty doors that had been unhinged, and hundreds and hundreds of chairs. The furniture at Rennes 2 is all very colourful. Primary colours. It was quite the sight to see.

I returned to the department where the secretary told me that all faculty and staff were called by the president to meet outside his building at 915am, and that we had to go. Outside his building were a couple hundred staff members waiting for the president. Instead, one of the VPs came out to deliver the following message from the president:
"Hello and thank you for coming. The president would like you to now go and put the furntiture back in the classrooms."
The response was mostly:
"WHAT!? You want US to go and refurnish hundreds of rooms?? Do you want us to get killed? What about the hundreds of security guards that are costing the school 10,000 Euros per day? No, no, we won't go!" Etc. etc.
And then finally:
"Where is the president?? He is hiding in his office like a coward! We want a leader! Bring him down here! Get that coward over here!"
This continued intil, for the first time in my life, I saw the president. M. Gontard is about five feet tall and a hundred years old. And he came to the top of the steps and looked over his kingdom in ruins. And though I have been very frustrated with him this semester as well, I felt very sorry for him. Everyone hates him. His students, the blockaders, his teachers, his admistrative staff, and the security guards. He looked so powerless.

Without saying a word, he took the first steps to putting back the furniture. He parted the sea of staff members and started walking towards the outdoor furniture showroom. But before he could get there, the blockaders spotted thier worst enemy, and the man they have been dying to see for months. They started charging at him with bright furniture. I thought they were going to kill him. Instead, they started blockading the president. They started piling furniture around him. The security guards were working to remove it, but the blockaders kept coming with more.

Eventually, the scene was pushed back to the furniture pile, where some teachers were blockading the furniture so the blockaders wouldn't blockade the doors to the buildings. The blockaders were blockading the building they've been living in so the security guards wouldn't remove the furniture from the blockaded doors. And the rest of us were standing in awe.

In the next couple of hours, there were fights, firecrackers, small fires, more fights, yelling and chanting, and more furniture moving than goes on at Riverdale Farm in the Spring. It was insanity. I eventually went home for the day.

On Wednesday morning, I arrived to the languages building to find it completely graffitied. A building that was clean and nice had been vandalised more than I could have ever imagined. Hurtful messages spray painted in every corner of the lobby area attacking just about everyone. They had also cut electricity wires and disabled smoke detectors. Because of the danger this could have caused, all classes in that building could not take place.

That morning, my boss came up to me with tears in his eyes and said (in French so it sounded much more passionate), "Emilie, I am ashamed... I am ashamed to be French right now." And he walked away. I felt so sad. I felt sad at the possibility that even writing a blog like this would make people think that all French people are horrible anarchists. The destruction and violence that has happened at my school has been the fault of an extremely small minority and does not reflect the school or the nation's attitude.

On Thursday, the staff was called to a meeting held by the president in one of the amphitheatres. He didn't say anything anybody didn't know, and profs got upset. My fave comment was a prof who stood up and declaired, "If I had done half this much damage in the local supermarket, I'd have been thrown in the slammer!" Except he used a rude word for jail and I don't know an equivalent for. The main part of the meeting was to tell us to encourage our students to go to the big meeting. Before, he thought ignoring them was a good idea, but that didn't work. So he asked us to send the students there en masse so they could vote against the blockade and hopefully be heard.

Despite this, the blockade was voted for and will continue until the next big meeting on Monday. What a bordelle.

But I am in Paris, and the problems in Rennes seem far away right now... I leave in ten minutes to pick Murphy up from the airport, and I am getting excited!! More on Murph latron.



Much love,

Hincks.