Ceremonies, Friday, June 24, highlighted the discomfort of a part of this youth, echoing the recent speeches of other students, at Centrale Nantes or AgroParistech.
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We could have been lulled by the agreed speeches of the leaders of the École Polytechnique reminding all the students “Excellence” and “the responsibilities” of such a diploma, bored a little, being moved From the talent of the string quartet made up of students who interpreted the first movement of quartet n ° 1 in minor of my life by composer Bedrich Smetana.
The graduation ceremony of the École Polytechnique, whose common thread was “finding its place”, was held on Friday June 24 in Palaiseau (Essonne), and spun, like the military school . Until two young women go up on the stage. About fifty comrades join them and embark on a lively criticism. A glance at the worried staff of the school is enough to understand that this initiative was not on the program. In front of the families of the five hundred and fifty students of the promotion, Sirine Kadi and Salomé Laviolette first recalled their condition of privileged children, just out of the bubble of the campus where money “was rarely a subject”. “We were taught neo-liberal theories as well as climate physics. We were forced to silence when the image of the school was at stake. We were bombed with conferences carried out by representatives of consulting firms, While praising the state service. “
First grain of sand in the machinery of this event. The second arrives a little later. The “godfather” of the promotion, Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of Totalenergies, had recorded, on video, a message of congratulations to the graduates of the X. Funny irony, when part of these students fought for long months against the installation of an oil giant research center on their campus. In the Arago amphitheater, where the students were grouped, half of them turned their backs on their “godfather”, when others whistled it.
political story
The coup de grace arrived when three young graduates came to tell their trajectory. One has become a baker in South Africa, one embarks on cinema. And the last, Benoit Halgand, embarks on a political story: “I could have joined this capitalist world without problem that I had rubbed shoulders with a position that would give me access to all the privileges of the polytechnician: money, Power, prestige. I could have believed in these CSR promises [corporate social responsibility] and green growth, believe that I was going to change things from the inside … before it was the system that changes my Interior. I wish good luck to those who try this path, but personally I do not want to be a useful pawn of the system. “
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