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Dismissed from Stanislas for wearing a sweater that “resembled” the LGBT flag, a former student testifies for the first time in “Additional investigation”
Dismissed from Stanislas for wearing a sweater that “resembled” the LGBT flag, a former student testifies for the first time in “Additional investigation”
(ADDITIONAL INVESTIGATION / FRANCE 2)
Pauline was expelled from this high school of excellence in June 2022, in particular for having worn a multi-colored striped sweater which was considered by management to be LGBT activism. She describes the homophobic climate which, according to her, reigned in the private school where she spent nine years.
This is not the first time that the Stanislas private school group has been the subject of accusations of homophobia. Already, in 2022, an article from Mediapart had pushed the Minister of Education at the time, Pap Ndiaye, to contact the General Inspectorate (IGESR). Four inspectors spent two months in the establishment in spring 2023 and interviewed nearly a hundred people. Pauline (her first name has been changed) went to see them to talk about the harassment she had suffered, and in particular the homophobic comments she had suffered.
When she was in first grade, while she was sitting on a friend’s lap, a member of the educational team ordered her to get up, she says, because “that we were going to think [qu’elle était] lesbian, and that it was an illness.”
She says she experienced real harassment, which culminated in her wearing this sweater from a well-known brand, a multi-colored sweater. In their report, the inspectors note having consulted an email written by a prefect, which mentions a “LGBT sweater” which he asks her not to wear anymore. Pauline showed this striped sweater to the “Complementary investigation” team: “It’s the one that got me accused of LGBT activism. They wanted me to stop wearing it. (…) I was told that it could offend some of my comrades, because It looked like an LGBT flag, and that it wasn’t in their values…”
Pauline was one of the best students in her class. When she had just obtained an excellence prize and a very laudatory report card at the end of first year, her parents were summoned by the principal. “We told them that I was fired, because I did not correspond to Stanislas’s spirit, that I had been toxic towards my comrades. I was just expelled, like that, overnight (. ..). It was a huge shock.” She was expelled just before the French baccalaureate exams.
Pauline has just filed a complaint against three managers at Stanislas, including the director at the time, for discrimination. Two LGBT rights associations also filed complaints of discrimination. For National Education inspectors“this case demonstrates the brutal method used by the establishment to exclude a brilliant student who no longer corresponds to the ‘Stan spirit’ and who could influence other young people“. But they did not consider that Pauline had been the victim of homophobia, and did not contact the public prosecutor. Caroline Pascal, who supervised the National Education inspection, ensures that on the set of 94 testimonies collected, ”we did not extract any characterized element which made it possible to say that the establishment had homophobic behavior”.
“Additional investigation” nevertheless collected around ten testimonies from former homosexual students. They are all going in the same direction. “In the canteen, the students were always saying: ‘Homosexuals piss us off, gays disgust us’…”; “In the evening I prayed [pour] succeed in not being homosexual. We were told it again in catechism, in conferences: ‘Yes, we can go against our sexuality.'”; “One day, a censor-director spoke to me about conversion therapy.”
The management of the establishment completely and firmly rejects the accusations of discrimination and homophobia.
Excerpt from “Stanislas: the excesses of a school of excellence”, a document to be seen in “Additional investigation” on October 10, 2024.
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