COLUMN Overseas Briefing

Author: Claire Bourne

PARIS – The Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, known simply as Paris III, is not an attractive edifice. It is a stark, colorless monstrosity stuck awkwardly in the middle of an older — and prettier — neighborhood. It quite frankly resembles a sanatorium.

Inside, graffiti strangles stairwell entrances and the walls of the fire escape. The hallways scream for a splash of color. The doors, shut tight, prevent the offices and classrooms behind them from breathing.

This building, the cradle of literary studies among public Parisian universities, does not invite reverence. It is simply a stretch along each one of its students' educational superhighways. It is not a home away from home. It is rather a learning space.

The idea of a "campus" does not exist in Paris. Most Parisian étudiants (students) live and take meals at home during their studies — maybe because it is cheaper than renting an apartment at city prices, or perhaps because the universities at which they are enrolled offer no alternative.

It costs approximately $140 per semester to attend a public university like Paris III, and while these institutions are not raking in $36,000 per student per year, their rigorous tertiary education program rivals curriculums at American colleges and universities, public and private alike. In addition, the French state-sanctioned university system is naturally diverse — anyone who has passed the baccalaureate can attend. Participating in extracurricular activities and community service projects for the purpose of going to a university is a completely foreign idea here.

The negligible tuition fee and the lack of an admissions office as we know it, mean that continuing one's education after high school is a right rather than a privilege reserved for those with bursting pockets. (Of course, there are the Grandes Écoles — the French Ivy League equivalents that not only cost a fortune, but also require two years of preparatory classes between high school and matriculation, hiking the fees even higher.)

Students are ready and willing to fight to protect this right, as a recent campaign against the privatization of French public universities illustrates. Spearheaded by the student synidicat, or union, the battleground shifted to the road outside the National Assembly last Friday where government ministers were supposed to bring the privatization issue to the floor.

This is not the first time (and it will not be the last time) that French students have fought to protect social égalité, or equality. Most notably, in 1968, some 30,000 students took to the streets to protest the social disparity created by consumer society. Their efforts prompted a general strike, the dissolution of the National Assembly and new elections. Maybe this new round of protests will not reach as far, but it proves that the French impulse to demonstrate is not dead.

Similarly, recent protests at Middlebury College confirm that students still have opinions, just when people were beginning to worry that the socially and politically aware generations of the '60s (anti-Vietnam) and '80s (anti-apartheid) had long since graduated, taking their dissenting voices with them. Last year's anti-CIA protest coupled with open opposition to "The Art of Kissing" lit a small fire that was kindled a few weeks ago during Ari Fleischer's visit to campus.

And now, with the American government several large steps closer to confrontation with Iraq, Middlebury's current student population seems poised to be part of the next war generation. On a tranquil campus where graffiti and suffocating classrooms are unfamiliar entities and where $36,000 per year served up on a silver platter is not an unusual occurrence, the question that must be posed is this: Are we ready?