We interpret that the Ottawa student protest did not face this issue because of the precedent set by the Montreal strike. Jennifer Beth Spiegel wrote an article called Performing “in the red”: Transformations and tensions in repertoires of contention during the 2012 Quebec Student strike. In her article she highlights a lot of the key aspects of the student strike. As she states in her paper:
“The legitimacy, and very ability, of a student strike was denied outright by many government and university officials. Students, they argued, were not laborers, and thus could not strike, but only boycott their classes. The move to reduce the student protest tactic to a consumer boycott was rapidly leveraged to delegitimize attempts to enforce the strike. Picket lines were quickly met with threats of sanction, and injunctions. To counter the claim that students could not strike, many pointed to the central role such strikes have played in maintaining accessible education.” (Spiegel …show more content…
Along with all of these tactics, the students took to social media to broadcast their message, through their lens. A great example from Spiegel’s text was, “As tensions and conflict mounted, satire and humor were frequently deployed. On April 1st, an April Fools March mocked the very small ‘green square’ movement of those supporting the tuition hike, featuring protestors in suits satirizing the elitist logic of promoting tuition hikes, with signs like ‘Pas de Pauvres dans mon Ecole’ (No Poor People in my School) and ‘Services Publics: Coupez tout!’ (Public Services: Cut them all!)” (Spiegel 2016). The Ottawa student protest took a different direction and adhered to mainstream tactics such as banners, chants and whistles. Although there was an element of Quebec strikes satirical side, as in the Ottawa student protest invited a group called Ottawa Raging grannies to perform who choose a satirical piece which was similar to the tactics used in