Friday, March 31, 2006

Some of you may be following the recent unrest in France associated with proposed changes to French employment laws. Lots of the protestors are students, making universities epicenters of unrest. The Sorbonne came in for some particularly active protests and vandalism due to a security vacuum when the Sorbonne's security forces withdrew upon orders from the French police but they didn't move into the power vacuum themselves.

All is not horrible, though. A post to one of the listservs to which Symi subscribes (H-France) sheds a nice ray of humor into the generally unfortunate circumstances.

a number of students went up to the fourth-floor library (Chartes) to try
to prevent other occupants from throwing objects out of the windows,
and that fights broke out between those trying to protect the books and
those trying to throw things out the window. Throughout, there was a
third group, students trying to study in the stacks.