The L'ORE is the student body of the Bachelor Program at École Polytechnique (or the bureau des élèves in French). The new L'ORE was elected about a week ago and is now composed of 9 members: Ferran Gómez, Eliott Sarrey, Ghadi Nehme, Léonie Chalochet, Inés Saih, Constance Ferragu, Guruprerana Shabadi, Marie Huynh and Rania Ezzane. This is the opportunity to learn more about the organization with its new members!
What are the main activities at the L’ORE?
The purpose of the L'ORE can be best summed up in one sentence: “Making the Bachelor Program a beautiful experience for all its students.” Through the next academic year, we will be organizing events and parties for the Bachelor students. But, this is not our only task. At the beginning of next year, we will be working closely with the administration to organize the integration weeks for the next incoming BX23 group. The L’ORE is also responsible for supervising the functioning of the Bachelor student clubs, known as ‘committees’, and also making investments towards improving campus life. Lastly, as elected representatives, we represent the voice of the Bachelor students, and express the needs and concerns of the community to the administration, as well as the university officials.
Why did you want to join the L’ORE?
All nine of us have been very invested in the student life at l'X ever since we arrived here and are passionate about working to make the Bachelor experience more welcoming and more fun for both current and future students. We enjoy working together to create events and activities for our entire Bachelor family.
How did the election work this year?
This year, there were three competing teams composed of nine students each, vying for the prestigious position of becoming the next L’ORE. Similar to the campaign for the Kès, each team names itself around the word “L’ORE”. The three teams were “Make L’Ore Not War”, “TindL’ORE”, and us, “Que Calore”.
The campaign started with a big introduction on Sunday, May 17th, where each team could present themselves and their agendas over a videoconference. That was then followed by a campaign week that ran from Monday, 18th May until midnight on Saturday, 23rd May. Because of the pandemic situation, the whole campaign was adapted to be run online, which was a new experience for everyone! Each of the three teams organized multitudes of online events geared towards convincing students to vote for them. Even though everyone was scattered around the world, the diversity of the events helped students to have a little fun and take the stress off, and gave them all something to look forward to. A special theme of the campaign was fun challenges like dances, exercises, and quizzes in which students could participate and even win some cool prizes. After this week of fun and frolic, the voting took place on Sunday, May 24th, and each student voted for their favorite team through a secure online platform.
How do you divide the work between all of the members?
Our L’ORE is composed of nine people. We work and make most of the decisions together but we each also have a specific role!
- General secretary (Ghadi Nehmé): he takes care of the organization inside the L’ORE, manages all the legal framework, keeps us up to date about this, sets up team meetings, and takes care of the administrative procedures.
- Internal relations (Rania Ezzane): she takes care of the relations within the school with the AX (the alumni association), the KES (the student body of the Ingénieur Polytechnicien program), the Master's programs and now hopefully, the other schools in IP Paris too!
- Communication (Constance Ferragu): she takes care of the weekly schedules and social networks, and is in charge of communication with the administrative team and the professors when needed. She also keeps the students aware of what is going on campus (events, parties, workshops, and competitions), and how students can get involved.
- Committees and binets (Léonie Chalochet): she is aware of all the activities organized on campus and has to make students aware of what’s happening. She also helps the committees with the organization of events and hypes them up to encourage an active student life.
- Sports and weekends (Eliott Sarrey): he organizes tournaments, creates and maintains relations between promotions for sports, organizes internal teams/tournaments, and weekend activities for the Bachelor students! Moreover, he has a good relationship with the coaches and is responsible for promoting sport and health in the Bachelor Program!
- Events (Ferran Gomez Puig): he is the primary organizer of all the Bachelor events including dinners and parties. This role includes contacting the Service de Protection Incendie et de sécurité (SPIS), the security service at Polytechnique, les coachs et la DFHM. SPIS, the coaches, and the DFHM. He also handles the legal aspects of the events with the general secretary and tries to plan events with other programs of the school. Finally, he works with the committees to encourage events and help them with the organization.
- Integration (Ines Saih): she ensures a good relationship between promotions, she is in contact with the DFHM (especially with the coaches) and organizes the welcoming of the new promotions as well as the exchange students.
- Treasurer (Marie Huynh): she solicits sponsors and handles the budget, signs the papers, and is in charge of settling debts which means making sure that everything is paid back.
- Chief Financial Officer (Guruprerana Shabadi): he has to know the inventory of everything owned by the L’ORE, where it all is, and keep the committees informed about it. He is also in charge of accounting (subscriptions, etc) and purchasing.
Even though each member has their own well-defined role, we all help each other out and work together to create the magic!
Do you work with other student associations?
We indeed work with other student associations of the school. The L’ORE interacts with the other programs of the school and especially the Kès so that the Bachelor students can enjoy the activities and events planned by the binets and the students from the Cycle Ingénieur in addition to the ones organized by the Bachelor students.
What is/are your best memory/ies with the L’ORE?
As the new L’ORE, although we’ve only just been elected, we already have several great memories. We did not necessarily know each other very well before creating this team but all the meetings that we had preparing for campaign week really strengthened the bonds between us, such that now our close friendship helps make us the solid and efficient team that we are today. The campaign week itself was definitely the biggest highlight despite the fact that we had to settle for an online version. There was overall an overall good atmosphere between the competing teams and we were very happy to get to know more about the students who came to our events. Finally, the reveal of the winning team was an intense moment and of course an exhilarating memory for us. We were truly humbled by the trust the students had placed in our team.
How do you cope with the Covid-19 situation?
Since the beginning of the lockdown, it has been Zoom meetings upon Zoom meetings to organize our events! As you could probably guess, the campaign week being converted into an online version was one of the biggest challenges but it was a success!
Other than that, in the past month, the Bachelor Music Committee had organized a music week, with a lot of fun musical activities.
We also had a Bachelor Book of Records week, where the Bachelor students competed to create records in various categories similar to the Guinness Book of Records.
In the future, our next big challenge lies in the integration of the incoming BX23 group in September. Since many students might face challenges in traveling to Palaiseau due to the worldwide lockdowns, we might need to adapt these integration activities to be online, while still ensuring that the new students get to know each other and become a part of our Bachelor family. For this, we will be closely working with the students and the administration.
