Quebec high school suspends 78 students after unrest, vandalism

Students at a high school in Saint-Jérôme were back after a major disturbance caused classes to be cancelled on Monday. École polyvalente Saint-Jérôme has suspended 78 students they think were involved. And it's one of the largest disturbances that the school service centre has ever seen. And it happened at one of Quebec's largest high schools with about 3,400 students. When half of those students were on their lunch break last week, absolute chaos broke out. There was a huge mass of people. We were just too many. Things started to go wild. There was too much noise. I couldn't hear anything. Some say they heard yelling about a blockade, reminiscent of the student movement in France. I think it's a bit of nonsense, because I know that in France, that's what they're trying to do to protest for certain things that I understand. But here, I don't understand the reasons why they would have protested. The school service centre says for now, it's not making any connections between Friday's incident and the movement in France. Classes were cancelled yesterday, while the school tried to make sense of the incident, analyzing footage and gathering details of the event. That's how they identified the 78 students that received suspensions, and still, more penalties could be given out. We're going to analyze the students this week, because it all depends on the level of involvement, level of the gravity of the actions taken and also the anger of the parents, when are we going to reintegrate them and in what way? Suspended students could be invited back to class as early as next week, and for now, high police presence on the school grounds is to be expected.