Scratch Back!
by Concordians Against Tribunals (CATs)
MEOW !
You may have seen this poster around Concordia – it’s not just a pretty graphic, but a symbol of resistance to the university’s crackdown on student organizing and dissent.
In 2015, Concordians Against Tribunals (CATs) formed and fought a successful campaign against the tribunals of dozens of student activists. The Office of Rights and Responsibilities (ORR) launched complaints against the CATs, initiated by professors. They were accused of infractions related to the picketing of classes during the 2015 anti-austerity student strike. Eventually, the charges against all of the protestors involved were dropped. Last year, in response to Concordia’s repression of Palestine solidarity activism via the Office of Rights and Responsibilities, the CATs are back.
The university is weaponizing the ORR through complaints, suspensions and opaque tribunal processes in an attempt to frighten and deter student activists. The most dramatic example of this crackdown is the suspension of a number of Concordia students after their involvement in protests. The unprecedented suspensions were indefinite and immediately barred students from Concordia’s campus, invoking a rhetoric of “safety” to discredit the protesters’ political messages.
During the November 2024 student strike for Palestine, Concordia University brought in Perceptage: a private security firm with links to the Israeli Defense Forces. Proclaimed in their “About Us” page as specialists in “countering threats like terrorism and hate crimes,” these new hires are emblematic of the administration’s false narrative of violent protests legitimising an increasing militarization of Concordia’s campus – this is hypocritical, as they are the ones enacting violence on their students. Concordia’s own campus security guards show up to pro-Palestine demonstrations armed with body-cameras on and zip-ties, and have a reputation for making violent ‘citizens arrests,’ turning university spaces into temporary detention centres. As private security guards hand off protesters to the SPVM, the university proves time and again that it would rather arrest its students than divest [from Israel and capital that funds the genocide in Palestine.]. In order for our movements to grow and win, we must be able to navigate surveillance and protect student activists from repression. Concordians Against Tribunals are one piece of a broader struggle against the corporatization and securitization of public space and our education.
By applying individual disciplinary measures to protesters, Concordia University attempts to isolate and depoliticize activists. CATs acted as a collective throughout the 2024/2025 school year in order to challenge these acts of repression. We presented a public counternarrative, through posters, zines, op-eds, patches, and tabling, to remind people that the suspensions are not individual punishments but a gross attempt to shut down dissent. Simultaneously, CATs is a project of care, building connections to resist the shame and fear of criminalization.
We know that Concordia is surveilling students through an expensive camera system and a posse of on-the-ground security agents. It’s imperative to be ahead of identification, mask up, and take
precautions before you ‘need’ to. Concealing identity does not infer intention. It fosters a culture of anonymity and solidarity among protestors: we let our collective action speak for the sum of individual persons. Collective anonymity as a generalised practice prevents particular protestors from being singled out.
We draw on the bravery of the people who resisted before us, and by using the same name and image, we hope to make it clear that Concordia University has always engaged in repression against activism and will continue to face resistance for it. We relied on alternative practices of archiving to learn from the lessons of the 2015 CATs campaign, knowing that students before us had faced and fought against similar repression, connecting us to a political lineage. This legacy is an antidote to the individualization of political repression.
We reject all attempts to criminalize and repress political action and we encourage everyone to take part in subversion and resistance. CATs is not a fixed collective but a generalized call to resist all repression – feel free to take up the paws.