[Bloquez l'empire!] Campaign to demilitarize at McGill

[Block the Empire]

Students dying to demilitarize McGill
By Mikey Opatowski and Melissa Karine Ward
News Writers

Student activists lie dead to protest on-campus military recruitment in
the McConnell Engineering building yesterday.

Stephen Davis / The McGill Daily

Seventeen student activists dropped dead in McConnell Engineering
yesterday morning to protest campus military recruitment.

The students, members of the radical campus group GrassRoots Association
for Student Power (GRASPé), smeared themselves in red paint and lay still
for ten minutes in front of a Canadian Forces table at the Technology
Career Fair.

"I don't think its right for military recruiters to be here at all," said
Dave Howden, one of the participants in the die-in. "They're misleading
students that the army is all about an exciting career and travelling the
world."

The recruiters stood watch during the action and did not talk with any of
the protesters. In an interview after the die-in, Lt. Serge Abergel spoke
politely of the protesters but defended his presence at the career fair.

"It was polite, peaceful, no bad things to say about it," Abergel said,
adding, "We are simply giving information about employment opportunities
for over 107 different trades, not just infantry. We are not imposing that
people join the military, nor have quotas to reach."

Bystanders trying to make their way around the protesters said they were
impressed by the die-in, but were not opposed to on-campus military
recruitment.

Other GRASPé members handed out flyers that challenged Canada's role in
the Afghanistan occupation and argued against students enlisting to
finance postsecondary education.

Lt. Sean Frankham, who was also recruiting at the fair, defended serving
in the army to pay for school.

"That's how I got through school," Frankham said. "And there was never any
problem with that."

The protesters left peacefully, chanting, "Recruiters lie, students die."

The mobilization stemmed from a workshop that GRASPé members Alexandre
Vidal and Cleve Higgins coordinated on Monday evening. About 20 students
attended the gathering, which fostered ideas on ways to eliminate military
presence and influence at McGill.

Focusing on government investment in the military and recruitment on
campus, Vidal and Higgins presented results of research they completed on
the relationship between universities and the military.

Vidal, who opposes Canada's involvement in the Afghanistan occupation,
asserted that government investments directed to the military should
instead be used to pay for student tuition fees.

"I don't want my tax dollars to go towards things I disapprove of, like
people being killed in Afghanistan," Vidal said.

"The 13 per cent of annual funds currently paying for military supplies
could be used to abolish tuition fees for all Quebec students," he added.

The discussion proceeded to dissect how recruitment processes work, what
kind of people they attract, and why.

Students in the rank force must spend their summers at school, and attend
a postsecondary institution for an additional five years after completing
their enrolment. Enlisted students who break their contracts are required
to reimburse the government for the difference of their tuition costs.

Higgins focused his presentation on changes that should be made to improve
transparency in McGill's research policies, suggesting that the University
make its harm evaluations publicly accessible and oppose confidentiality
agreements with corporations.

GRASPé is planning additional protests in front of Montreal's recruitment
centre and will work to "demilitarize McGill" by advocating the
prohibition of recruiters on campus.

Last year Higgins discovered that McGill engineering professor David Frost
received funding from Defence & Research Development Canada (DRDC) – and
worked in conjunction with a DRDC employee Fan Zhang – for a 2006 paper,
"Effect on Scale of a Blast Wave from a Metalized Explosive."

For the paper, Zhang received research funding from the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency, a combat support division of the U.S. Department of
Defense that has commissioned research on explosives used by the U.S.
military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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