We can get out ofAgroParisTech and not be proud of it. In any case, this is the feeling expressed by eight students from the prestigious French school of agronomy, during the graduation ceremony, which was held on Saturday May 7 in Paris. “Several of us do not want to pretend to be proud and deserving of obtaining this diploma at the end of a training course which globally encourages us to participate in the social and ecological devastation in progress”, they attack from the outset in a seven-minute vitriolic speech against their school, in front of several hundred young graduates.
“You’re not the only ones who think there’s something wrong”
They regret that AgroParisTech “trains hundreds of students each year to work for the industry in various ways”. Good and bad, in their eyes. Like “trafficking plants in the lab for multinationals that increasingly enslave farmers: designing prepared meals and chemotherapy to then treat the patients caused, inventing “good conscience” labels to allow executives to believe themselves heroic in eating better than others, developing so-called “green” energies which make it possible to accelerate the digitization of society while polluting and exploiting on the other side of the world”, they list.
Very quickly, these students invite their classmates to change course, by addressing “those who doubt”. “We want to tell you that you are not the only ones who think there is something wrong, because there really is something wrong,” said one of them, before continuing: “ We doubted, and sometimes we still doubt. But we decided to look for other ways, to refuse to serve this system and to build our own paths. »
“You can fork now”
“You can branch off now,” conclude these students before leaving the stage to applause. The video, posted on YouTube on Tuesday, hit the mark and has more than 192,000 views on the clock, no doubt helped by the leader of La France insoumise Jean-Luc Mélenchon who shared it on his Twitter feed.
Contacted by 20 minutes, this group of students, “agros.bifurquent”, says it wants to take the time to consult before responding to the media. This is not the first time, in any case, that students take advantage of a graduation ceremony to invite the ecological start of their school, their future employers and their classmates. End of 2018, Clément Choisne, student at the Ecole Centrale de Nantes, had also, for example, marked the spirits. “There are things that are never questioned in our engineering studies”, explained the young graduate, citing in particular “the model which creates elites who will have to find solutions without ever wondering whether the solutions we find are perennial, sustainable and egalitarian for society”. His speech, also posted on YouTube, has 370,000 views. More than 33,000 students, mainly from Grandes Ecoles, have also signed to date the manifesto “For an ecological awakening” published in September 2018 and in which they say they are ready “to question [leur] comfort zone for society to change profoundly”, even if it means turning away from large companies to which their training often predestines them.