2023-11-24 13:48:29
Faced with the insecurity that has reigned for several years in a pedestrian tunnel (Located on Boulevard Churchill, it connects the city center of Mons to the Champ de Mars campus on the other side of the boulevard), this Friday, November 24, students and Mons students took action: they built a wall which now obstructs an intersection leading to one of the two exits. The goal is to bring safety back to this tunnel passage.
The genesis of the problem
Alice Crucq, president of ORE, the representative organization of UMons students, explains that a Feminist Commission exists within the organization and that it is within the framework of this Commission that the action was conducted. “We built a wall in the intersection of a tunnel which poses a problem”explains the president, “Because for years attackers have been hiding at this intersection to attack mainly female students. For more than five years we have been asking the city of Mons, the UMons authorities and the Walloon Region to look into the problem. Improvements were made, there was indeed a fresco and the provision of lights, but our demand which asked the Walloon Region to block this intersection was not heard by it although it received a favorable response from both the city of Mons and the UMons authority”.
Faced with this inertia, the girls decide to take action. “Concretely, we are lucky to have in the group a girl whose father works in the construction industry.”continues Alice Crucq, “He was therefore able to explain to us how to proceed with the tools adapted to those for whom this is not the profession. We therefore used concrete blocks, cement and special foam which allows the bricks to solidify and which is easier to use than cement..
An illegal but accepted act
Well aware and aware of the illegal nature of their approach, these activists claim to have thought carefully and discussed with the rectorate as well as with people working in the city of Mons before embarking on this enterprise. The date was not chosen at random, this wall was erected the day before November 25, the international day against femicide. “We found the symbolism super interesting” adds Alice Crucq who specifies that theUMons supports their approach.
A large number of students use this tunnel almost daily since it connects the city to the largest university campus in theUMons but also at the Haute Ecole Condorcet which is just on the other side of the tunnel.
If these builders for a day have made the wall today, (they and) they are well aware that their construction is not sustainable, (they and) they have only one wish : a lasting solution to adapt this passage whose unsafe nature users have long denounced.
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