“The Sorbonne in two weeks it will be a gigantic cluster”, alarms a law student. Partials, maintained face-to-face in Parisian universities, began at the start of the week and students are worried about the health risk. Amine Elbahi, another law student, testified
appeal last week to request a switch to distancing. But, the judges considered that the adopted sanitary measures were sufficient to maintain the examinations. “Our rooms comply with the directives of the Ministry of Higher Education,” says Jérôme Glachant, the vice-president in charge of the Commission for Training and University Life (CFVU) at the Sorbonne.
However, this Tuesday morning, a law student said to 20 minutes to have found himself in a room where “there were no windows, no ventilation and no social distancing”. Same observation from a master’s student in art history. “At the Michelet campus, there were about thirty of us crammed into a TD room that I had never seen full before,” she says. The supervisor was so overwhelmed that she told us to dial on the floor if we were too afraid of catching Covid-19 by sticking to our comrades. “
79% of students would go to partial despite their contagiousness
“I have co-morbidities and I’m pretty sure that in two weeks I would have caught the coronavirus because of the partials,” says the law student. “We receive more than a hundred requests for advice per day, many are really worried,” explains Ilan Volson-Derabours, member of the legal community for students of the Sorbonne (CJES). Especially since 79% of students say they are ready to go for their exams even if they are affected by Covid-19, according to a survey carried out by the CJES among 10,000 of the 23,000 students in exams.
“So far, only 1,200 students have said they have to self-isolate due to Covid-19, which represents roughly 5% of students who take exams. The incidence rate is not really higher at university than elsewhere, ”reassures Jérôme Glachant. However, “there is a cohort of positive students who are going in partial and nothing can be done about that,” says Ilan Volson-Derabours. We just hope that no one will suffer. “
A substitution session for confined students
Questioned by student organizations on this subject, the presidency of the university promises to organize a replacement session for students who would be forced to isolate themselves during the partial period. This session should take place before the next vacation, so as not to impact the master’s selection files for undergraduate students. The modalities of this session have yet to be decided at the Committee on Education and University Life on the 11th. January.
“This does not encourage the students to remain confined, because they are afraid that ultimately the session will not be held, or of accumulating too much work in the second semester,” said Ilan Volson-Derabours. Recalling that the student representatives are part of the commission which must establish the modalities of this “bis session”, the vice-president of the CFVU, “has no doubt that they will be able to assert their rights. “