The significant number of blank votes that were registered in the elections of representatives of the Faculty of Medicine professors has a greater meaning than the eventual discrepancies before the next election of the dean of that superior institute. The fact shows that a long-standing conflict is still latent in which the university ruling party led by the rector Fernando Tauber played a leading role.
On several occasions, in different decades, the Medicine entrance exam was a watershed, as in the ’60s. It is that the difficulties generated by an almost unrestricted income were raised there and consequently the increase in the number of students, many from abroad, which is usually considered superior to the building capacity of the Faculty. Others see as elitist any way of requiring some training from applicants.
This is the expression of different conceptions about the role of the University in the country, as was evident when the only dean who did not sign a statement in support of Daniel Scioli’s presidential candidacy was Medicine, arguing that the investiture of the authorities of the house of higher studies is an impediment to brand the University with one political party or another.
The then dean came from a sector of professors that was defeated in the 2018 elections, when Dr. Juan Ángel Basualdo Farjat was appointed, whose re-election is currently running, apparently with the support of the professors of the only list that intervened in the elections that ended last Friday.
The discrepancies between the leadership of the University and those of the faculty had given rise to heated debates in the superior council that governs the house of higher studies.
The issue seemed to be a thing of the past until 33 abstentions appeared out of a total of 126 voters in the elections for the faculty of the Faculty of Medical Sciences.