At the Faculty of Law of the Free University of Brussels (ULB), the choice of the name of a future promotion arouses strong controversy. Among the four personalities proposed to baptize the next promotion, Figures Rima Hassan, new European deputy for rebellious France. A candidacy that divides.
Each year, students are invited to appoint a significant figure to which they wish to associate their generation of graduates. This time, alongside the tax lawyer recently disappeared Typhanie AFSCHRIFT, the lawyer Michèle Grégoire and Gisèle Pelicot, it is the name of Rima Hassan who is subject to the vote.
But this choice caused an outcry. Nearly 1,300 people – including around 400 students and several former graduates – signed a letter addressed to the management of the ULB to firmly oppose this possibility. The signatories believe that the MEP embodies positions incompatible with the democratic and humanist values of the university.
They mention in particular the current prosecution against Rima Hassan: four complaints for apology for terrorism, as well as charges related to alleged death threats against the former spokesperson for the French government, Prisca Thevenot, and his children, as well as against MEP François-Xavier Bellamy.
Initially planned before the summer, the student election was finally postponed to the start of the academic year, officially for “technical reasons”. However, this postponement could also make it possible to appease tensions. The University now plans to organize a debate between students in order to discuss more serenely the implications of such a choice of sponsorship.
