Petition is addressed to: Frank Bournois
Recently our school has started an exercise to redefine the meaning of the historical acronym (ESCP stands for Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris). While the exercise started as a simple online survey where everyone could propose their ideas, the dean of the school is now giving us a short deadline of barely two days to decide between 5 options, without providing the transparency to the choice nor providing the option to say that none of the options are satisfactory.
Here are the 5 options: “Dear Alumni, Dear Colleagues, Dear Students,
Many of you participated in the consultation. It was a big topic of discussion, even beyond the online poll, and the evidence of a genuine attachment to your school.
What emerges from the survey is that the community has chosen to give it an aspirational character, representing the "raison d'être" which is now a legal part of the official statute of companies.
After selecting the suggestions that were most in line with our identity and our project, the President and I selected 5 proposals:
You are invited to make your choice, via the link below. The poll will be closed on Thursday 21 November, 5.00pm.”
LVMH never changed the meaning of its acronym nor did the MIT. Our school has a heritage and some of it must be modernized for the future but not everything should be lost.
We demand that the current consultation period of time should be extended and the option of “I don’t like any of the above options” to be introduced in the survey.
We look forward to jointly work with our school management and alumni community and find the best solution for the future of our school.
200 years of history can’t be changed so lightly in two days. This decision has a major impact for the future of our school and its brand.
The proposed names are ridiculous. The proposal to the alumniii is closed, with a short delay and not exhaustive
Notre école est connue pour être la première école de commerce de l'histoire, fondée par Say et à Paris. Donc vouloir changer le sens de son acronyme revient à renoncer à cet héritage exactement deux siècles après sa fondation. Je ne pense pas qu'un jour Harvards Business School, Stanford ou London School of Economics songeraient un jour une idée pareille, sans parler de HEC Paris. Notre école est déjà prestigieuse et bien classée, concentrons nous au renforcement de son image plutôt qu'à changer un nom d'une valeur historique inestimable contre un nom anglais sans âme à mon sens.
