“I had the opportunity to say a few months ago, not easy to be 20 years old in 2020. I’m not sure that it will be infinitely easier in 2021.“This is how President Macron started his exchange with the students of Paris-Saclay University on January 21.

In response to the concerns of students deprived of lecture halls for more than two months and increasingly subject to precariousness and isolation, the Head of State promised two measures.

One euro for a meal twice a day

The first ensures access for all students to two meals a day for the price of one euro per meal in university restaurants (U restos), to face the economic consequences of the covid-19 crisis.

Many students have indeed faced great precariousness since the start of the health crisis, since the closures of the catering and cultural sectors have resulted in the disappearance of student “jobs”.

Read also: Students and covid: “We must act now, it’s a matter of life and death”.

Face-to-face lessons one day a week

The second promises more to fight against student isolation. “If (a student) needs it, they should be able to come back to university one day a week“in lecture halls with a maximum tonnage of 20%,” Emmanuel Macron said. “A student must have the same rights as an employee“he justified.

On January 14, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that first-year students could resume face-to-face work in half-groups from January 25. Then, “if the health situation allows “, the measure should extend “to students of other levels“.

No return to normal in the second semester

The President nevertheless warned the students that “a return to normal is not possible in the second semester“of the university year and that it will be necessary to live”with the constraints“sanitary”until summer“.

“The objective is a second semester where we learn the lessons of the first. You had the stop and go, you have to answer that. The second semester will be done with the virus and a lot of constraints“he lamented again.

Devastating effects of the crisis

In this context, hundreds of students demonstrated on January 20 across France to denounce the devastating effects of the health crisis on their daily lives. “It made me react to see students who wanted to kill themselves. For the first time in my life I myself thought about my own death a few weeks ago“, testified to AFP Titouan, in second year of philosophy at the Sorbonne. He evoked, like many of his comrades, a”too much isolation“and”a loss of meaning“.