Electing rector to reprivatize university?
Kyiv Polytechnic opposes Education Ministry intervention. Students think the state encroaches on the university’s property
On Wednesday, October 26, about 5,000 students of the Kyiv National University of Polytechnic Institute (KPI) staged a picket of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport. The young people were doing so to defend the right to elect the university rector. The term of office of the current rector, Mykhailo Zgurovsky, expires on November 1. Yet the bids for filling the actual vacancy are still to be called. The situation surprisingly resembles the one that arose in July 2010, when Donetsk National University was to elect a new rector after the then incumbent Volodymyr Shevchenko had been dismissed and barred from participating in the competition. This resemblance really alarms KPI students and faculty.
“It is clear that the ministry wants to appoint an ‘outsider’ as acting rector, which arouses the biggest fear in us,” Oleh DESIATOV, chair of the KPI Student Council, says. “The point is the law never stipulates the time for which this person can be appointed as acting rector. The university’s faculty, staff, and students are afraid that the story of Donetsk National University, Vinnytsia Polytechnic University, and the Kyiv University of Food Technologies may repeat, when the state appointed ‘strangers’ as acting rectors. For, assuming this office, the individual acquires the right to sign all kinds of documents and agreements, including ones on the sale of land plots. This subject is especially topical for KPI because the state has been showing keen interest, over the past year, in the student holiday centers Maiak, Politekhnik, Hlobus, and Sosnovy on the Kyiv Reservoir banks.”
In 2004, the last time the rector was reelected, the bids were invited at a two-month notice. In an attempt to apply this practice, the rector election commission was formed back in September. But Radio Liberty quotes Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk as saying that no competition can be announced while a “living person” is still in office and that this will be done on November 1.
According to Desiatov, election commission members have repeatedly tried to meet the mi-nister, but “each time the secretary said he was away on a business trip or at the Cabinet of Ministers and, hence, could not receive the university’s representatives.” As a result, the university’s collective decided to officially urge the ministry to announce the competition and to appoint Mykhailo Zgurovsky, a person they had chosen, as acting rector. This address was sent to the Ministry of Education.
The KPI Student Council chair calls the October 26 rally just a “meeting of the collective” to which, incidentally, Dmytro Tabachnyk was also invited. But he did not show up, so the collective chose to go to him.
“It was not a rally in defense of Zgurovsky. It was a rally in defense of the right to independently elect our rector. We have two main demands: the competition for the office of rector should be announced on November 1, and Mykhailo Zgurovsky should be appointed acting rector until the faculty and students elect a new university head,” Illia VLASIUK, a university student and a participant in the protest action, told The Day.
If the ministry fails to meet these demands, the students promise not to let the newly-appointed acting rector into the KPI premises.
The Day sought Mr. Zgurovsky for comment, but his secretary Volodymyr Yankovy said that the current rector had decided to refrain from any comments on the situation until November 1. And, as we found, this applies not only to the media. “We would like to come into closer contact with Mr. Zgurovsky, but he, unfortunately, does not intervene at all in this situation. He says he stays on as rector until November 1 and, hence, is busy caring about what he is supposed to do: the construction of a stadium, the unveiling of monuments, and the university daily routine,” Desiatov said.
