A hundred students from Sciences Po Paris have occupied the historic building of this nursery of the French elite since Wednesday evening to demand the resignation of its director Mathias Vicherat, who was questioned by the police in a case of domestic violence.
“An occupation was voted yesterday by a show of hands during a general assembly attended by between 250 and 300 students” at the request of student unions, said Inês Fontenelle of the Student Union.
The building was still occupied by a hundred students on Thursday morning, according to her.
Mr. Vicherat and his partner Anissa Bonnefont, who both accused each other of domestic violence, were placed in police custody on Sunday evening before being released on Monday. A preliminary investigation has been ordered by the Paris public prosecutor’s office.
The director of Sciences Po Paris wrote to students, teachers, staff, and members of the institution’s councils on Tuesday to assure them that he “heard” their “emotion” and promised to “meet with them very soon.”
Fifty students had already blocked the entrance to the historic building of Sciences Po Paris on Tuesday morning.
According to a statement from the students, “his continued leadership of our institution is an insult to all victims of gender-based and sexual violence.”
Sciences Po Paris has around 15,000 students, half of whom are international students and 25% are scholarship recipients.
Often seen as the training ground for the French elite, Sciences Po Paris has been plagued by scandals involving its leaders for the past ten years without its academic prestige being tarnished.
Mathias Vicherat succeeded Frédéric Mion at the helm of Sciences Po Paris in November 2021, who was forced to resign in February of that year for concealing suspicions of incest against the political scientist Olivier Duhamel.
Mr. Duhamel was the president of the National Foundation of Political Science (FNSP), which oversees Sciences Po Paris.
A former student at Sciences Po, from which he graduated in 2000, Mathias Vicherat is a former classmate of President Emmanuel Macron at the National School of Administration (ENA), the flagship institution of the senior civil service.
Shortly after taking over as head of Sciences Po, he declared that addressing gender-based and sexual violence was an “absolute priority.”
