In the midst of a pandemic, students are losing their morale: distance learning, partial courses in physics, precariousness … With hastags like # ÉtudiantsFantomes and #MentalBreakup, they organize themselves on the networks.
The students are not at the party. Since the start of the pandemic, some have even started their university life without being able to set foot inside college. And this is felt on their morale: according to Dr. Caroline Combes, director of the university health center of Lyon interviewed by 20 Minutes, the suicide risk among students is now 6 to 7% (11% for those in health), against a national average of around 5% of people who have thought about suicide during the year, according to the latest figures relayed by the magazine Sciences et Avenir. In addition, there are the problems of poor housing, particularly glaring when you have to stay locked up at home, the precariousness, reinforced by the loss of certain small jobs, the hyper anxiety-provoking context … Mobilization is currently taking place on social networks, in order to express the anxieties and the evil of being a national student.
In times of pandemic, tweets instead of demonstrations
Behind the new hashtag #studentsfantoms, distressed students who come together. On January 12, 2020, a letter signed by "sacrificed, forgotten, survivors" is posted on Twitter. It bounces in particular on an article in Le Monde of January 11, 2021 which relates the visit of the Minister of Higher Education Frédérique Vidal to the University of Cergy, where classes are gradually resuming face-to-face.
A sentence calls out to students: when the minister mentions the risk of excessive contamination in cafeterias or "if a candy is lying on the table". It didn’t take more to remobilize. What these young people denounce pell-mell is also the loneliness due to the cancellation of lessons, the boredom of lectures by videoconference and decisions concerning them which seem to them both incoherent and infantilizing, like of the release of Frédérique Vidal.
Already, in early January 2021, students had organized themselves to denounce the upset organization of universities in the face of the pandemic. Hashtags like #MentalBreakUp or #ExamsDistanciel then allowed them to denounce partials that physically brought students together. Right now, classes are struggling to resume, when kindergartens have been back to school for a long time. Despite the discomfort, on Twitter, some people manage to be overflowing with creativity and try to laugh at this gruesome situation.
The wave of more serious messages made it possible to challenge political leaders: Jean Castex spoke about this on Wednesday January 13, 2021 on his Facebook page, announcing to receive representatives of the student community on Friday January 15, 2021 , and promising a state response to this crisis. It has already pushed a number of young people to abandon their studies: 1 in 6, according to Les Échos.