2023-06-16 16:41:17
They were about to take a national exam to validate their diploma. This Thursday morning, a dozen students from Ifag, a business and management school in Brest (Finistère) witnessed a scene that resembled a hostage-taking, according to The Telegram. Several students on campus have decided to file a complaint against the establishment, says West France.
What happened ?
This Thursday morning, near an amphitheater on the Brest Open campus filled with students, a “fake hostage taker” starts screaming and firecrackers are thrown. “We were completely panicked”, tell some of them to West France. “Suddenly, we hear a dull noise and a man screaming: find me the manager! Then, like a flurry of gunfire, and screams. The students of the amphitheater evacuate the premises.
The scene looks very realistic… except that it was a simulation organized as part of a student project by the Brest Open Campus. And that some of them had not been warned. Ten students in third year of communication, who were about to take an exam in a room on campus, do not know anything about the exercise. And believe in a real hostage-taking.
These frightened students rush out of the room. According to our information, a young girl injured her knee while trying to leave the room. “I still have a stomach ache (…) knowing that I have already experienced an attack, they make me go through that again, it’s hard”, breathes one of the students to the Telegram. “We were in tears, completely in shock, and we still are”, describes another.
Why such an exercise?
These communication students participate each year in “an emergency seminar” which must “teach them to master crisis communication”, explains to the Parisian François Pouletty, co-founder of the Brest Open campus who adds that this type of exercise takes place “ in a lot of schools.
Supervised by three experts, the students had to work on crisis management. They had to build media flashes and press releases and learn how to publish content on social networks.
“All the faculty, supervisors and students were aware,” says François Pouletty. All… except the ten students in question as well as the person in charge of supervising them. “There was a mistake that I assume, a communication error which is not acceptable”, estimates the one who claims to “understand” the reaction of certain students.
psychological cell
In addition to the person injured in the knee, two students “who experienced the situation badly because of personal antecedents” were taken care of by the psychological unit of the establishment. “The vast majority have digested the situation,” says François Pouletty.
According West Franceseveral students filed a complaint against the establishment.
The management of the establishment, which “deplores this situation”, has apologized to the students, affirms, to the Telegram, Samy Guelman, director of the Brest Open Campus.
The school should learn from such an incident. “It is not the nature of the exercise that is called into question but the communication error. This should not happen and it will not happen again, ”promises François Pouletty.
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