France Bleu Picardie: do the young people of 2022 live less well than those of 2021?
Felix Bodoulé Sosso: compared to those of 2020, that’s for sure. Those of 2021 too, since we have suffered two years of coronavirus with successive confinements, periods of uncertainty for young people, particularly students. So I think unfortunately, yes. Now we are waiting for solutions and a little more positive.
We talk a lot about student precariousness. In particular, there is the difficulty of feeding. Your association runs a solidarity grocery store in Amiens, where students can go to buy groceries at low prices. Have you seen more people in two years?
Yes, completely. This is the observation we make. Moreover, this is an observation that is even made nationally. For example, since the beginning of the crisis, we have tripled the number of beneficiaries at the Agoraé and we even had to set up food distributions since that was no longer enough. So we are really facing an increase, an exacerbation of the student precariousness that already existed before.
Are these students that we didn’t necessarily see before?
Yes, we have seen new profiles. That is to say that we had students rather from less well-to-do classes. And there, currently, we even have students who are even more from the middle class, either who have either lost their job following the crisis or the confinements, or the family situation has deteriorated and these are populations that we weren’t used to seeing in distribution and even at the grocery store. It is even rather worrying since these are students who have become precarious with the crisis and whose situation is not even improving over time.
It’s mid-January, we’ve just finished the partial period. There was a lot of uncertainty, concern with the surge in Covid cases. How did that happen ?
In Amiens, we didn’t get too many reports of problems, even if we did have a few. You should know that there was a Covid session which was compulsory at the university level for students. That means they didn’t have to go directly to catch-up, each component had to organize a session for them. Fortunately, a priori, it went well, even if there were a few clashes. On the other hand, it is true that the climate was very anxiety-provoking since there was a lot of uncertainty about how it was going to unfold. It was a little planned, at the last moment, with a very poor organization, so not necessarily made to promote the success of all. And that is something we had already warned about during previous reviews.
There is a feeling of being left behind by many young people
Turning 20 in 2022 means voting for the first time in presidential elections. Do the candidates’ programs take young people’s lives sufficiently into account?
Not sure, since the public debate is not much focused on youth issues, especially now. I think there may be a disappointment or a feeling of neglect on the part of many young people, whether on the programs or even in the debates. And then, when we see for example the announcements of the president on the universities, it is not the most reassuring. We may even be heading towards a trend of privatization of higher education and this is not necessarily what we expect. It is even rather something that worries us.
You are referring to this speech by Emmanuel Macron last week, before the Conference of University Presidents. He envisaged the end of free higher education. So are you worried?
As a student organization, we are frontally opposed to it. Going back to free universities in general means accepting the inequalities that will necessarily be a consequence of this non-free education. And in a climate where inequalities already exist and have even been exacerbated by the crisis, it is quite simply to deny equal opportunities to high school students and future students. We are waiting to see if this is something that will be present in the programs of the candidates. In any case, we will mobilize against this type of measure.