With Engineering and Computer Science, the process of appointing deans in the 17 faculties of the National University of La Plata (UNLP) begins today. And while 15 have already defined their names for the period 2022-2026, Agronomy remains open-ended and Medicine is pure mystery.
This is how things are following the general elections in the UNLP ended last Friday. Those that every four years summon to the polls the heads of practical work (JTP), graduate and graduate assistants (who make up the same faculty), teachers, non-teachers and students. It is the representatives of these estates who must now elect the deans on the board of directors of each academic unit. And those who next month will also vote for the president of the University.
The boards of directors are made up of 16 members: 7 professors, 1 JTP, 2 graduate or graduate assistants, 5 students and 1 non-teacher. In case of wanting to re-elect (as in Medicine and Agrarian), the deans will need the votes of 11 councillors.
Those running for office for the first time – or following one or more terms in between – will only require 9 votes. These are the cases of Informatics, where Marcelo Naiouf, current academic secretary, has the path paved to try on the dean’s suit as of today, as well as Marcos Actis in Engineering, who will leave the institutional vice-presidency of the UNLP to return to the chair of 1 and 47, where he already led from 2010 to 2018. In both faculties the boards of directors are called to meet today to define their new leadership.
Two faculties, one mystery
But if in most of the deaneries the authorities and the date for their designation are already practically defined, there are two in which the mystery is enormous. One is Medicine, where the suspense stretches from the graduate elections that took place last month. In that cloister, a radical opposition list to the deanery gave the blow by keeping the three councilors at stake (even with the JTP that aspired to get the ruling party).
This meant that, to date, the management of 60 and 120 has only guaranteed the votes of the 7 teaching councilors. Something that was possible thanks to the unity list achieved by the ruling party and to which former members of Hoja de Roble also joined, the group that governed Medicine for 25 years, until 2018, when Juan Ángel Basualdo Farjat took office.
Basualdo needs 11 votes for his candidacy to be re-elected and 9, in case of proposing a successor. The graduates have already announced that they will not accompany him and in the event that the dean seeks his re-election, they would even propose an opposing candidate (“several names are being considered”, they advanced without breaking the hermeticism). And in the non-teaching faculty they avoided advancing a position while waiting for “greater certainties”.
However, the key to the definition is so far in the hands of the 5 students: between the Peronist majority of Remediar and the minority front that makes up Patria Grande and the PCR. They are two forces that, although they accompanied the current dean in 2018, have been exposing their differences for some time. Without going any further, a student assembly was convened for tomorrow at 60 and 120 with three major topics on the agenda: practices, presence (Medicine has been taking virtual courses for more than two years) and the aforementioned election of the dean. In the previous one, from the youngest faculty of the faculty they advanced: “We are going to consult with the students what is the best, they are the ones who are going to define”. Mystery reigns.
Attached to Medicine, another battlefield appears in Agrarias, where Ricardo Andreu’s aspiration for a second term collides with the opposition’s candidacy for which Esteban Abbona is mentioned, linked to the historical officialism of the faculty.
Of the 11 votes he requires to be re-elected, Andreu today would have six (five professors and one non-teacher), while he struggles to add another half dozen, between the 4 students from Franja Morada and two graduates. As in Medicine, there is no date to choose either (it would be this month or the next).
another view
The panorama is clearer in Dentistry and Veterinary Medicine, where Gabriel Lazo and Marcelo Pecoraro are preparing to be re-elected next Monday. The path is also paved so that Dr. Amalia Meza succeeds Raúl Perdomo at the Observatory.
Two days later, Ana Julia Ramírez will go for another mandate in Humanities and María Cristina Piro will change the dress of Vice Dean for that of Dean in Psychology, which comes from facing deep internal discrepancies.
Naturales is heading to elect Eduardo Cruce on April 18, while Néstor Artiñano Miguel Berri and Mauricio Erben have an advantage to return to being deans in Social Work, Law and Exactas. It will be resolved between April 22 and 27.
Daniel Belinche in Arts and Eduardo De Giusti in Economics are other deans who will go for a second term. While in Architecture the vice-dean Gustavo Páez sounds like the successor of Fernando Gandolfi. And in Journalism, the academic secretary Ayelén Sidun will continue Andrea Varela, who would occupy the institutional vice-presidency, in the Rector’s Office.
