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Chanting “we will not be silenced” and “this will not blow over,” more than 700 students and professors walked out of class and gathered on the McGill campus Wednesday to protest against what they call the mismanagement of sexual misconduct allegations against professors at both Concordia and McGill universities.

“Can everyone here who has been warned or heard of an abusive professor during their time here please raise their hand,” Connor Spencer of the McGill student union asked the crowd.

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Nearly everyone did.

“That,” she said, “is why we are here today.”

Students from Concordia and McGill demonstrated outside McGill’s administration building, turning at one point to wave to the administrators housed within.

Both institutions have been roiled in recent weeks by accusations that years of sexual misconduct perpetrated by professors or teaching assistants have been ignored by school administrators and that students’ complaints were not followed up. Students at Concordia claimed they sent a letter in 2015 to the chair of the English Department complaining of a “toxic atmosphere” in the Creative Writing program. Many students reported avoiding classes taught by certain professors at both universities because of fears stoked by stories of sexual harassment or predation.