Is the veil really a problem at university?

At Pierre and Marie Curie University,

You had to have a keen eye on Wednesday to find traces of an Islamic headscarf on the Pierre and Marie Curie campus, in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. Waiting in front of the lecture hall exit on a rainy day of exams, taking a look at the library hoping not to make too much noise, wandering around the student dining areas. In short, we are far from a large-scale, even less organized, phenomenon.

This does not prevent Bruno Retailleau, in the columns of Parisian Tuesday, to say they are “favorable” to the ban on the veil at university. An idea challenged by François Bayrou. “Frankly there are other priorities,” say Lina* and her friends, crossing paths on their lunch break. Very quickly, the discussion turned to the lack of teachers. The young woman wears the veil, not her friends. “That doesn’t stop me from having a bac + 5,” she says, bravado.

Removing your veil at the entrance, “it’s humiliating”

In reality, Lina is still lucky. According to a report from the National Observatory of Discrimination and Equality in Superior, “candidates of North African origin have 11% fewer favorable responses” compared to others, quotes Elisa Mangeolle, spokesperson for Fage . For the student organization, the Minister of the Interior’s comments “are shocking, secularism is supposed to protect students, not become a weapon.”

If the veil is banned at university, “I will have to spend an entire year removing my veil at the gate and putting it back on when leaving, it’s humiliating, I find”, testifies Souadou, a student of marine sciences crossed in the tail of the microwave. “What’s the problem with wearing a veil or not? When I came with my cross as a necklace, no one ever said anything to me,” adds his comrade Lilou, “angry and sad” about this new controversy.

“No major problems in 2024”

“From the moment I put on the veil, it was part of my identity, so removing it is like taking away a part of me,” says Yasmine*, a master in integrative biology. . “I have the impression that people who wear the veil are regularly persecuted,” saddens a friend, who remains anonymous. “We have feedback from students who feel stigmatized,” says Elisa Mangeolle, spokesperson for Fage. By wishing to “legislate on the way women must dress”, the Minister of the Interior “is making a mistake because that is not how secularism is written in the law”.

However, Souadou assures her: she never thought about wearing her veil at university. “Maybe because I met people who weren’t interested in that,” she says happily. Vincent Thomas, president of the University of Burgundy and secularism referent for France Universities, also brushes aside the debate. “We have not identified any major problem linked to the wearing of the veil in 2024. Which does not mean that there were no difficulties, but that they were resolved directly by the secularism referent of the university concerned”, generally via a reminder of the law and “dialogue”.

What “difficulties” are we talking about?

What exactly can these “difficulties” be? “This may be the wearing of the full veil, which is prohibited,” but no reports have been made in universities. At the University of Burgundy, “the last serious problem dates from the year 2016-2017, a student refused to remove her ears from her veil” while the supervisor wanted to ensure that she was not cheating by means of ‘an earpiece. Forced to take a retake, the student again refused to clear her ears, and was excluded from university for a year. The veil is also generally prohibited for certain practical work, as a safety measure.

Our file on wearing the veil

Vincent Thomas recalls, however, that if the freedom to wear the veil applies to students, “the Ater (temporary research associates, young teachers sometimes still in thesis), as public agents under contract with the State, cannot demonstrate their affiliation with a religion. But for him, the observation is clear: “Apart from these marginal cases, wearing the veil is not a problem at university. »