While the experimental public establishment project at the University of Western Brittany (UBO) gave rise to a mobilization of students and users opposing it last week, and the vote for its adoption was rejected, the NPF deputy for Brest Center Pierre-Yves Cadalen in turn expressed his concerns.
“The fear of a challenge to university democracy is legitimate. The speed of setting up the project prevents deliberation from taking place. The university environment has suffered from policies of job insecurity and budget cuts implemented in recent years, and particularly since 2017 and the arrival of Emmanuel Macron to power. Knowledge and research are essential common goods in the Republic,” he wrote in a press release.
A “very worrying” financial situation
“The financial situation of the UBO is very worrying, not because of the statutes of the establishment, but because of the non-alignment of State allocations with regard to the increase in student numbers and inflation. This is also what the president of UBO noted in the press on September 20, recalling the structural dimension of the establishment’s budgetary situation,” adds Pierre-Yves Cadalen.
The deputy says he is “available to lead the fight to obtain additional credits with all the stakeholders concerned, in the interest of our university. The UBO deserves better than an unraveling from which neither administrative staff, nor teacher-researchers, nor students would benefit,” he writes.
While a meeting is planned for the end of October with the presidency, Pierre-Yves Cadalen is available to all student and teacher unions upstream or downstream of this, and invites the presidency “to take the time for deliberation in this democratic space that is the university”.
