EN TOMA

My school is on strike! Ok, well one of the facultades at least - La Facultad de Derecho, which is the School of Law (the different facultades of La Chile are spread out all over Santiago). They even have a blog link: derechoenreconstruccion.blogspot.com. 

I'm still a bit confused about why they are on strike, but when I read La Tercera (one of Chile's national newspapers), it said that the students were on strike because the dean plagiarized work and claimed it as his own. Or something of that sort. And you think my Spanish would be good enough to be able to read a simple newspaper article. Qué verguenza. 

The picture above is one that I took today on the way to school, to see if it was still on strike, or if classes were going to resume. That's another thing about the universities here - they really aren't all that organized. NONE of my classes have a course syllabus, so I am always paranoid that I'm going to show up one day and have to all of a sudden take a midterm. But anyway, with regards to the toma, none of the staff at the facultad, or even my professor, have even emailed the students to let us know what the fuck is going on (you know at Berkeley we would immediately get an email from the Vice Provost or Chancellor, or anyone else with a lofty title), so I have no idea if my classes are straight up cancelled, or if they are actually meeting somewhere else in Santiago outside of the facultad. If the latter is the case, then I am royally fucked - because let's be real, I've been struggling enough in that class with my 100% attendance rate. 

In the beginning of the toma (a little over 2 weeks ago), students stacked chairs up towards the front gate, so when you walk by the gate, you just see a bunch of chairs sticking out threateningly at you. They just recently put all the chairs down from outside. Which makes me sad because I kept forgetting my camera every time I commuted to the facultad to check the status of the toma, and I really wanted to take a picture of it because it would have looked really cool. Also, some of the students have been camping out in the school (for 2 weeks now, and they show no sign of stopping anytime soon), and have even gone so far to build a makeshift fort in the front courtyard of the school.

 As if I wasn't floja (lazy) enough here, my hardest class is now on hold because of this toma. And there's going to be a national strike tomorrow (Wed, 5/13) at all of the facultades to protest the new education laws. 

But, you know what, despite this chaos, it's never a boring day at La Chile. And part of me absolutely loves it.