In business school, it is better to take care of your entrance. The first steps in this codified universe represent a crucial moment. During the integration weekend, we celebrate success in the competition, after several years of studious self-sacrifice in preparatory class. We build our esprit de corps through games and sporting challenges. We try to join a student association, discovering the power of the network. Its toxic excesses too. The first semester at the Grande Ecole is a “red zone” : this notion, developed by American researchers, highlights the prevalence of sexist and sexual violence during the first months of school. It is confirmed in France.
During her studies at Audencia, Margot Tramontana says she was harassed by the G-Eyes television news, an official association financed by the school. When she joined the Nantes establishment in 2012, the student had a relationship with a member of a school association, which generated a degrading rumor about her. “In front of the camera, three members of the JT – men – came to ask me questions about my sexual practices. Three other students, all men, witness the scene and insult me. The news was then broadcast in front of 400 people, with five long minutes of images intended to humiliate me. » After the broadcast of the show, the student decided to no longer attend parties and ended up leaving school in 2014, before even graduating.
These news stories continue to be broadcast in front of packed amphitheaters several times a year. The world viewed the one from December 2022. On the menu: evening videos, election of “biggest grabbers” and “biggest suckers in the associations”targeting of certain students, attacks on their private lives: ” Did you sleep well ? We think so by being doubly well supported. Two dicks in one evening, how does the double sentence work? » It was not until May 2023, after a investigation carried out by Médiacités, that Audencia puts an end to the association’s television news. In September, Margot Tramontana, now an actress and director, sent a letter to the school, signed by thirty former students of the establishment: “We are constantly told that the “grandes écoles” train “the elites of tomorrow”. It is high time that they question the guarantee of a peaceful school climate to ensure the good training of future bosses. »
Alexandre Pourchet, director of Audencia’s Grande Ecole program, recognizes that the school has “clearly lack of vigilance in controlling this association”. He nevertheless specifies that the latest news “did not give rise to any feedback from students with the alert process”, and recalls that the leaders of this news had, like all association presidents since September 2022, followed the four three-hour training courses dedicated to sexist and sexual violence (SGBV). The system was extended in 2023 to all association members, in partnership with the Egaé group, co-founded by Caroline de Haas. Each association now has a VSS referent.
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