Students on strike

When university students in America are upset, they write letters to the editors, crash board meetings, and complain a lot…but they still go to school.  In Brazil, as in many other countries, this would seem ridiculous.

Students at the (over 40) federal Brazilian universities are currently on strike. (This is almost 250,000 students!)

When we were in Belo Horizonte, our Couchsurfing host’s school was currently on strike.  The professors have demanded a 5% wage increase, better hours, and other remunerations that have incensed a quarter of a million students to join them in solidarity.

Instead of wallowing away their protest, the students at UFMG School of Architecture, and Design decided to have a massive exposition/party to celebrate their protest...this also coincided with some popular holidays in Brazil. So the students closed off the street in front of their school, put together a display of their best work from the past year, bought a bunch of beer and liquor, found some DJs, got a few student bands, put up a foosball table, and threw an outstanding shindig.

The open selling and consumption of alcohol on the school premises was something an American college student would find interesting. Normally alcohol consumption in American universities is left to before class, a flask, or after class. You would be hard-pressed to find students selling cans of beer in front of the university entrance - unless things have changed a lot since I graduated. 

Passersby could check out student projects, buy the student magazine, sample some of the cookies and cupcakes the students had prepared, or just pick up a can of beer at a reasonable price.  (The beer was Brahma, which Avery says tastes like PBR—perfect for hip art students.)

Once the sun went down, a band started playing some popular Latin American songs (a good mix of Spanish and Portuguese). The students really seemed to dig it.

As the band was winding down the set, they left stage for a moment - only to be brought back from the cheers for an encore of one more song, “mais un.” The band obliged.

But rather than play just one, as requested, they kept playing and kept playing until its encore set was just as long as their normal set, if not longer.

Seven songs and one more “mais un” later, the band finally finished its encore.