Richard Descoings

Ah voir ces photos me fait (presque) regretter d’être à Dijon (je ne vais pas parler du Havre !). Espérons qu’avec ses milliers d’étudiants destinés aux grandes universités américaines, Sciences Po Paris n’oublie pas (encore plus) ses cycles délocalisés qui sont certes à plus faible effectif, aux locaux moins beaux (voire inexistants apparemment), sans la vie culturelle et le dynamisme de la métropole et sans les grandes personnalités parisiennes.
Espérons que les 1800 étudiants n’accapareront pas l’attention en faisant oublier les 100 étudiants de Dijon et ceux des autres cycles déloc’.

En espérant être accepté à sciences po et à Reims l’année prochaine…

Je voudrais juste rectifier mon message précédent. Il est évident que l’administration du Havre fait tout ce qu’elle peut pour améliorer nos conditions de travail qui sont que temporaires en attendant le nouveau campus. Je n’avais pas non plus tous les éléments pour penser de la sorte et je prie donc l’administration d’accepter mes excuses.

Dear Mr. Descoings,

Moved by a deep respect of equal, grounded and frank freedom of expression, this letter aims, beyond any individual declaration, to be an objective and sincere statement of facts about the one that had been so far the youngest member of the Sciences Po family. It is our fundamental intention to raise the voices that have been silenced by the echo of the recent harsh criticism, in which the signatories of this letter do not feel represented.

Our campus is certainly a new born, and making no exception, growing up has not been easy for it nor for us. There is no point in hiding our well-known lack of our own building or the fact that, even with the best intention from the region, we have been hosted so far provisionally in buildings that are certainly not the most appropriate for a university campus. It is true that we have had a number of less prominent professors. It is true that our rooms are sometimes too small, that we often lack plugs and that chair pads are not the most comfortable to put on them a laptop.

Nevertheless there is another side of the coin, which has been too easily neglected, and that we consider essential to make a truthful depiction of our campus and its life. Our future campus has its date of birth already defined by 2012. The teaching staff has been renewed all along and among it figure as well excellent scholars and professionals with the most brilliant curriculum. Every classroom is provided with all the technological facilities that we require. This year, the longest list of remarkable improvements have been brought, such as the opening of our own library, just to quote an example.

Despite the fact that none of us is unaware of the various things that still need to be worked on, we feel the need to state the extent to which we have lived all along, and with particular intensity during the last months, a crucial and devoted dynamism deeply engaged towards leading the way to the most prosperous maturity for our campus, within the shortest delay. This leadership has further on been a personal accompaniment of each and every single student who has, with no exceptions nor limitations of any kind, always found a way of open doors to address every member of the Administration, would it be for academic issues or others whatsoever.

In this third year of life of our campus we can look back and see that, indeed our hardest efforts have been necessary, yet, together with a tireless and unconditional help and support from our administration, as well as your decisive back up at the end of the chain in Paris and the Region’s and City’s support, those efforts have been often even more fruitful than what we could have expected. We have been hugged with encouragement and empowered with the resources to gather students from the whole world at the occasion of ASEM, SPEAC and even of our own BP Debating Tournament. We have travelled to debate as far as England, Holland, Germany, Scotland, Turkey or Thailand. We have created our own student associations from BDE, to BDA and AS. We have made all the way to (and rocked) last year’s Minicrit. We have created from scratch our own sports teams, from basketball, to rugby or sailing, some having already reached maturity, others still flourishing.

We are convinced that everything can always be improved and we would like to sincerely thank all the silent people, in Le Havre, Paris and elsewhere in the world, who share our conviction and are fervently committed on a daily work basis to keep on helping us achieving our projects and ensuring a progressive improvement of Science Po Paris – Le Havre’s situation. To all those and to you amongst them, we would like to express our deep gratitude, and confirm that all that work might be silent, but it is definitely not invisible, and, day after day, it grows bigger and bigger in front of us, for us.

Yours sincerely,

79 STUDENTS FROM SCIENCES PO LE HAVRE