Students at NSCAD university on strike March 15-21

HALIFAX: On Saturday, February 28, students at NSCAD University voted at a Special General Meeting to join the provincial one week strike called by the Canadian Federation of Students Nova Scotia, and were the first to join this historic strike. 

This is the first province-wide student strike motion to pass outside of Quebec (in Canada), where similar motions have resulted in historic mass mobilizations (see Quebec 2005 and 2012 student strikes).

Students at NSCAD have joined the provincial student strike from March 15-21, by not attending classes and picketing outside on weekdays.

Students have also organized alternative programming during the strike week, with the goal of reimagining the university. 

NSCAD students have also given each day a theme.

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The Strike Motion Specifics:

Attached is the entirety of the strike motion passed at NSCAD, but the demands outlined below are the provincial demands originally included in the CFS-NS motion.

Be it further resolved that the first demand be for “Affordable Tuition” at all public postsecondary institutions within Nova Scotia, and that this be defined as:

1. Standardization: the abolition of differential fees for international students, and for out of province students, and the end to the federal cap on the number of international students, to be made possible by increased government funding, and
2. Affordability: the immediate 20% decrease to all tuition fees for all students at every public postsecondary institution across Canada, to be made possible by increased government funding, and;

Be it further resolved that the second demand be for “Divestment”, and that this be defined as divestment of all public postsecondary institutions across Nova Scotia from:

1. all weapons manufacturing or armament producing entities,
2. all entities directly involved in the production of fossil fuels,
3. all entities which directly or indirectly support genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (including but not limited to those supporting current genocides and crises in Palestine, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan), and
4. all entities which directly profit from the exploitation of resources on sovereign Indigenous land without the consent of the Indigenous people(s) with ancestral ties to that land, or that in any other way violate treaties between colonial governments and Indigenous peoples, and;