His black silhouette, close-up, stands out against the bright orange background. In capital letters, this message: “Vicherat resignation”. In the Sciences Po hall, dozens of posters were put up on Monday, December 4 at the end of the day. The school director and his partner, who accuse each other of domestic violence, had been in police custody since the day before. They left the police station on 7e district of Paris late Monday afternoon, said the prosecution.
“The medical-judicial unit did not find total incapacity for work on either of them, and neither of them wished to file a complaint at this stage,” said the public prosecutor, adding that the investigation “continues in preliminary”.
Within the establishment, everyone reports having learned the news “through the press”, after the dispatch broadcast by Agence France-Presse at the beginning of the afternoon. “As this is a strictly private matter, Sciences Po has no details or comments to provide at this stage”indicated the institution World in a laconic message.
“Is this function cursed? »
Among the teachers, “astonishment” predominates. “Everyone is wondering what this new crisis will bring. It brings back bad memoriesconfides a teacher. I’m very attached to this house… What’s going on with this feature, is it cursed? » “Everyone falls out of the cupboard, completes another. Mathias Vicherat has made sexual and gender-based violence a central issue in his candidacy. »
Appointed in November 2021 at the head of the establishment of 14,000 students, Mathias Vicherat, 45, had been dubbed by the inner circle of the two governance councils of Sciences Po, the council of the Institute and the board of directors of the National Political Science Foundation (FNSP). The school was then emerging from a long crisis. The former director, Frédéric Mion, was forced to resign on February 9 for having concealed accusations of incest targeting political scientist Olivier Duhamel, president of the FNSP. In an unprecedented way since 1945, the institute was deprived of its two heads for two months, until the art historian Laurence Bertrand Dorléac succeeded Olivier Duhamel in April.
The same year, another scandal called #PigSciences shook all political studies institutes, revealing dozens of sexual assaults to which female students had been victims, with complete impunity. The Parisian school had proposed an action plan, for application at the following school year, by formalizing the existence of a “disciplinary investigation unit”.
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