“It is urgent that medical students realize that social realities have changed”

Since the beginning of the academic year, the national press and the report from the Observatory of Sexist and Sexist Violence told us that hazing is still very present in higher education, particularly in medical schools.

However, hazing has been a registered crime in the Penal Code since 1998. In addition, a National Anti-Hazing Committee was formed in 2003 as an association under the 1901 law and has continued to lead a campaign to oppose the phenomenon since its creation. . support for interested students. Its action is supported by the membership of associations and federations of parents of pupils and students, by the association of numerous unions of teachers, students, secondary school students, conferences of school directors and great schools, presidents of universities and mutual societies.

The deans-directors of the medical training and research units (former faculties
of medicine) and university presidents cannot ignore the law. For this they have
of disciplinary power within their establishments and article 40 of the code of criminal procedure, which specifies that “every constituted authority, any official or public official who, in the exercise of his or her duties, becomes aware of a crime or misdemeanor, is obliged to notify the Public Ministry without delay.”

The boarding school, a brotherhood

The means to prohibit and punish exist, therefore,… but nothing changes. In fact, adult students organize meetings, outside the university, with their younger colleagues in the name of the student fraternity, to share values ​​at the service of a common cause: medicine. This is the so-called “integration” process, which, unfortunately, in certain cases, leads to sexual and sexist violence and drunkenness linked to excessive and forced consumption of alcohol. Then unbearable tragedies occur, often overlooked in silence.

In search of explanations, some refer to the past, maintaining that integration,
in the form of hazing, has always existed, particularly in the “corporation” of internal doctors. The hospital boarding school was created in 1802 to make possible the permanent presence on site of competent and fully available doctors. After a very selective competition, the interns thus entered into a true brotherhood, with its habits and customs, such as habitual familiarity, the spirit of solidarity, friendship and respect for others. The boarding school, maintained with the creation of the University Hospitals in 1958, was the engine of medical excellence.

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