MONTREAL - Dozens of students at Concordia University have begun a week-long boycott of their classes to protest tuition hikes.
Roughly 100 people played drums and chanted slogans Thursday morning outside the university's main downtown building before they began a march around the downtown core.
Last week, following a three-hour long meeting, 1,152 people voted to have the student body officially join the province-wide walkout to oppose a near-doubling of tuition fees by 2017.
"It's something that affects all of us and we believe as an English school in Quebec you know we're often not too involved in these kinds of movements, and it's time to rethink our place in the student movement," said Chad Walcott of the Concordia Student Union.
However support for the tuition protest is far from universal.
For every student protesting outside the Hall building, dozens more walked past them on their way to class.
This week students at the John Molson School of Business faculty voted 84 percent against joining the walkout.
Those who oppose the walkout may not be in favour of a tuition increase, but say they recognize that tuition cannot be frozen.
"I realized we haven't had a tuition increase in a while, and tuition in Montreal, I mean in Quebec, is one of the lowest," said Michael Szirmay.
"Education is a privilege not a right."
Meanwhile across town, students at UQAM held a creative protest at the corner of Rene Levesque Blvd. and Berri St.
Wearing sandwich boards emblazoned with anti-hike logos, two dozen students walked, danced and jumped through crosswalks in order to send their message to drivers waiting at red lights.
Around 6 p.m. a large group of students from several universities and CEGEPs is planning yet another demonstration and protest march.
Wednesday afternoon students marched up to Highway 40, and with a police escort took to the elevated Metropolitan highway for about half an hour.
