Occupation at Montreal university ends in arrests, calls for resignation

Protest police attired in black tapped their wand against shields and attacked a building at Montreal’s downtown francophone university around midnight Wednesday.

They were called to l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) after militant blocked themselves inside the J.-A.-DeSeve building, the same building where 21 arrests were made on Wednesday afternoon.

20 more people were arrested as the midnight occupation was scattered, and the building was left in such anarchy that classes normally held there had to be eliminated. Furniture and vending machines were upturned, walls were coated in graffiti, and glass ends and beer bottles scattered on the floor.

The arrests earlier in the day took place after police said they reacted to fights.

As the cleanup was in motion on Thursday, some students and professors called on the university’s rector, Robert Proulx, to resign.