Talk:Student protest

German translation

It would be a big gain for everybody if somebody could translate the German "student protest" page even if only partially into English. There is a lot of historic information that could be interesting and important to English speaking countries and cultures that have people who understand English. A lot of information is not available to people because of such language barriers.78.94.60.112 (talk) 18:25, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Propose merge from Student strike

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I think the article Student strike should be merged into the article Student protest because it is just a form of student protest. --MTLskyline (talk) 14:16, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I have two problems with the article, Student strike. First, students cannot go on "strike". They are not employees, and are not withholding services. They can boycott classes, yes, but this is not the same thing as a strike. Second, boycotting class is effectively a form of student protest. I would say that it is not an important enough topic to warrant its own article. Sure, the tactic of boycotting class should be mentioned as a form of Student protest, but it should be limited to this article only.--MTLskyline (talk) 02:05, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 02:22, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

The appelation "student Strike" has a long history and has always been associated with the studient unions. From what I see "Boycott" is really only used from this year as a strategy from the Quebec Liberal Party to avoid having the 2012 Quebec student protests from being protected by the laws about strikes in the province. If you want to add a note saying to the "student strike" article that the terminology is contested by at least the Liberal Party, you can, but it's very far from being widely used. Kamizushi (talk) 12:29, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

The criticism of this term is not limited to just the PLQ. It has also been criticized in editorials in the news media, such as this one at CTV Montreal. Even the Concordia University Part-Time Faculty Association has indicated that they believe the term "strike" is inaccurate, and would rather the term "boycott" be used.--MTLskyline (talk) 15:02, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Then add a comment about how the term is controversial and for some. Using a terminology only used in Quebec and only by people opposed to student strikes is an obvious violation of the neutrality of point of view. In France, striking is a legally recognized right for students because of the Charte de Grenoble, which give them the same rights as workers.Kamizushi (talk) 16:28, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I disagree. I think the use of the term "strike" lacks neutrality. The protesting students in Quebec describe their movement as a "strike", however you would be hard pressed to find a specialist in labour relations who agrees with the use of the term. The second link I posted above, from the CUPFA, which supports the students' "strike", indicated that the term strike is inaccurate since only labour unions can legally go on strike. In my opinion, the term "student strike" should be mentioned if France recognizes student class boycotts as a form of strike. However, the concept of a student strike is almost unheard of in English speaking countries. This being the English Wikipedia, I think the topic is only important enough to merit a section in the Student protests article. --MTLskyline (talk) 03:29, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

How does a hunger strike plays in that? Following your definition it should be called food boycott, no? It's called a student strike because, first, it shares its origin with the syndicalist movement and second, because it's collectively rather than voluntarily, usually because of a decision from the student union. Searching "student strike" on Google gave me 806,000 results with quotes and 91,600,000 without results while "student boycott" only gave me 46,700 results with quotes and 12,000,000 without and "School boycott gave" me 30,000 results with quotes and 52,300,000 results without. From that, we can clearly see that student strike is the most commonly used terminology. Furthermore, even inside this site, "student strikes" is more frequently used. Concerning specifically the merging proposition (which sounds kind of a strange thing to do considering we have a category of articles specifically dedicated to student strikes) correct me if I'm wrong but I'm not aware of any rule saying a bias toward the English speaking culture is an acceptable excuse not to respect the neutrality of point of view.Kamizushi (talk) 18:55, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

A food boycott, I like the ring to that. However people on a hunger strike are not pretending to be labour unions "on strike" in the same way as the students are. Nobody would define a hunger strike as a form of strike action, so why should a boycott be defined that way? I'm curious as to where that term even came from, but that is beside the point here.

To address the Google results, I would like to point out that there is no one particular way to refer to what is known as a "student strike". As I already mentioned, the concept is not common in English-speaking regions. The fact that there is no better term for it than a "strike" is probably because this phenomena has not spread into the US, UK, Australia, or even the rest of Canada. When the British government nearly tripled tuition in 2010, there were protests and riots across the UK, but no "student strike". I admit that the term is commonly used in English Canadian news media, but, again, there is not one single term to replace it, and most articles I've seen use the term boycott as a synonym at the very least. (For the record, "strike" by itself has 744,000,000 results on Google and "boycott" only has 44,000,000 results.) Just because there is a lack of a better term than "student strike", does not mean that we should use this politically charged term and pass it off as neutral/factual. Boycotting class is a form of student protest, nothing more. If it is a legally recognized form of strike action, it can be mentioned, of course, but in most places it is not. Regarding the existence of the category, I am in favour of removing it as well.--MTLskyline (talk) 05:23, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

• I went ahead and requested a Third opinion.--MTLskyline (talk) 03:39, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

3O respond

I am writing here in respond to 3O request. I never participated in discussion on this talk-page, and never edited neither of articles in question. First, this is not quite 3 opinion, as we already have 3 users here, but i would give you mine anyway. After analyzing both articles, and all your arguments and sources, i would say following: In general, there is not enough material or reasons for those two articles to be apart. Also, there is serious questions about students ability to go on "strike", as explained, and therefor, i would propose to merge those two into Student protest. Also, per sources it looks like "Student strike" term may be controversial, so merge should be done even more. Sure, entire content should be merged, and differences and controversials can be sourced and mentioned in the new/old Student protest. Thats it, i hope that i helped, for anything more, i am here. All best. --WhiteWriter^speaks 16:58, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree. After all a strike is a form of protest. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 18:04, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. I am in complete agreement with you. There is no reason to have two separate articles about student protests. Boycotting classes is a form of student protest, but then so are occupations of buildings, street demonstrations, wearing little red squares, etc.--MTLskyline (talk) 05:23, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Crazy alternative idea

Couldn't all the issues discussed be fixed by renaming Student strike to Student boycott? D O N D E groovily Talk to me 20:22, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

That's if there is sufficient reason to maintain two separate articles. Student boycotts are nothing more than a variety of student protest. In my opinion we should merge them, and remove usage of the term strike to reference a student boycott of class. However, I would be willing to compromise and keep two separate articles, as long as the term boycott is used.--MTLskyline (talk) 22:56, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Merge

Can I go ahead and merge the two articles? Does anyone have any remaining issues with the proposed merger?--MTLskyline (talk) 13:24, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

I went ahead and merged the articles.--MTLskyline (talk) 15:46, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Removal of boycott section

Please do not remove the section on the student boycott of class without discussing it here first. Thank you.--MTLskyline (talk) 23:03, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

Undo merge from Student strike

Not only does the section merged from the article have nothing to do in an article listing student protests because it is a section about a mean of protestation (just like "sit-ins" doesn't belong in this article), but it is also biased.

Calling student strikes "boycott of classes" is a strategy established by the Liberal Party of Quebec to delegitimize and trivialize the student movement. Everyone called student strikes "student strikes" before the government used that strategy and made the term "boycott of classes" popular amongst those against the movement.

If students cannot go on "strike" because they are not employees, then using the same logic, people cannot go on "hunger strike" or on "sex strike" either because they are neither employees of their body nor are they withholding services from their spouse. Those should then be called "food boycott" and "sex boycott", which they are not, because they are not boycotts. Striking is a concept and that concept applies to "student strikes", much more than "boycott" does (see the appropriate Wikipedia articles).

It is also nonsense to call this a boycott just because the government does not legally recognize the movement as a strike. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a Canada or Quebec law book. Following the same logic, the page about "civil disobedience" should not exist either because the governments of Quebec and Canada do not legally recognize it.

Also, since when are media outlets authorities on anything? Media can be biased and they are. What the medias have to say about the legitimacy of calling student strikes "student strikes" is irrelevant since they are themselves biased and are often employed to feed that bias.

Student strikes already have a name and that name is "student strikes". They have always been called "student strikes" (as the links to articles about other student strikes in history show). I'm not a Wikipedia buff, but I am pretty sure it does against the rule that says that the commonly used term should be used.

The merge should be reversed because this article is not about means of protestation and renaming "student strikes" to "boycott of classes" is very inaccurate.

I see in the edits and interventions of user MTLSkyline in the talk page of this and other related articles as an attempt to impose political bias and opinions as fact.

It is ridiculous that such blatantly biased edits even have to be discussed.70.40.168.59 (talk) 00:34, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree. The article should be unmerged and/or the relevant section deleted. It's looks like an attempt to reinvent the wheel to pass a political bias as fact. This is wrong. It is using, and my that I mean "purposefully using", semantics in the same twisted way that the government did to delegitimize the student movement, to twist things to their advantage. The use of the word "boycott" or "boycott of classes" is biased and participating to the bias. As strike is a strike. Everyone knows what a student strike is. No need to reinvent the wheel by using "boycott" unless you want to add a connotation to it. "Student strikes" yields 241,000,000 results on google, while "class boycott" yields 16,500,000 results.

I want to attract the attention to the irony of this : "In the West, boycott of class date to the early days of universities in the Middle Ages, with one of the earliest and most significant being the University of Paris strike of 1229" Calling it a "boycott of class" then linking to an article titled "University of Paris STRIKE". MTLSkyline: Are you going to change all the articles and rewrite history to call it a boycott of class? This is absurd. It is also absurd that I tried to link "strike" in "A common tactic of student protest is to go on school strike." to an appropriate article, but that when looking at the strike disambiguation page, the link I have found that would have been the most appropriate was a link to this article. Another argument as to why student protests and student strikes should be separate articles. Student strikes are a standalone and legitimate mean of protest, just like general strikes, culture strikes, hunger strikes, prison strikes and rent strikes. Someone is trying hard to twist the facts and make the articles biased. --69.9.85.190 (talk) 04:27, 20 June 2012 (UTC)