Last week, the teaching assistants’ (TAs) strike took priority at McGill as they protested to demand a fair wage for their work, healthcare, and indexed working hours. Beginning on March 25, students arrived on campus to the sight of picket lines and bright banners, full of signs indicating that all 1,600 TAs will continue to pressure the university administration to renegotiate a new collective agreement (CA) with TAs, under the Association of Graduate Students Employed at McGill (AGSEM). However, TAs have not been alone in raising banners and chanting on campus, as Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students continue to call on McGill to divest from corporations tied to Israel and cut ties with Israeli universities, as they have done since October. McGill quickly responded to both protests by increasing police presence on campus and avoiding to engage in any kind of constructive conversation with students.

The administration’s reaction to protesters on campus is far from unprecedented. In 2011, Montreal riot police officers brutalized McGill students protesting on campus against tuition hikes. Last November, McGill President Deep Saini requested police presence for a peaceful protest led by Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) at McGill, and the university called the police in response to the Feb. 22 pro-Palestine protest in front of the Bronfman Building. The students blockaded the building for the entire school day in response to the Desautels Faculty of Management’s course offerings of ORGB 434: Special Topics in Organizational Behaviour, Comparing Startup Ecosystems of Israel, and Canada and FINE 434: Topics in Finance—which includes a collaborative three-week study trip with the Hebrew University Business School. Saini deemed the obstruction of university activities, including blocking access to buildings, “unacceptable.” The disruption of classes on campus and “interference with McGill’s operations” is a necessary step toward change, and is a direct result of the university administration’s unwillingness to meaningfully engage with its student body.

When essential workers strike and frustration with the McGill administration is widespread, every single student must call for solidarity. Chanting and banners are not intended to intimidate fellow students, as the university claims, but serve to call for basic rights and fair treatment. While no one deserves to feel unsafe, the uncomfortable nature of activism is a necessary aspect of bringing about change. Course disruptions and uncertainty can be frustrating and confusing at the individual level, however, protesters’ continuous mobilization strives to gain students’ support and remind them who is at fault, because no change can be achieved in the silence of playing by the university’s rules. For this reason, students must join and protect the picket line, by calling out professors who engage in and even encourage scabbing.

Students must understand that increased police presence on campus is a tool for the university to secure its property and protect its image, not its students. The university uses security on campus to distract the student body, professors, and staff from the fact that their decision to dismiss calls for divestment and meet the TAs’ demands is a deeply rooted political and institutional issue, not a safety one. Security for the administration is not security for the students, and no circumstance justifies the presence of violent, racist, and colonial police on our campus. Resisting policing in the university is the first step to building an actual safe and free campus, where all students are liberated and all workers fairly treated.

McGill profits from the confusion and demonization of protesters on campus to try and turn students against their peers. In an email communication sent to the entire student body on Thursday, March 28, the administration announced that the police “made at least one arrest” and that McGill would press charges against a protester breaking the law. This strategy of threat and intimidation is meant to paint student mobilization as violent to the rest of the student body. Students must resist this tactic and instead see police presence on campus for what it really is: McGill’s fear of seeing its students and workers organize peacefully and its unwillingness to respect the growing consensus on the ground for fair treatment, divestment, and a better world.