The Faculty of Medicine of La Plata (UNLP) does not finish accommodating to the post pandemic. The aftermath of quarantine that determined suspension of classes for more than two years continues to drag controversy.
After the controversial re-election of the deanwhich he obtained thanks to the votes of the students who gave it to him in exchange for going back to the classroomnow known the resignation of a head of practical works who was summarily for teaching a face-to-face class with four students.
The teacher is accused of commit a “serious offense”. He had an administrative file that would end in his exclusion from the educational staff and then decided to submit his resignation before the final ruling.
The “irregularity” that confronted him with an internal summary a possible sanction of expulsion from the faculty happened in June 2021when the quarantine had already been partially lifted for many economic and educational activities.
But Medicine was still closed and without the presence of students and teachers in the same physical space. It was then that Professor Marcelo Carlos Cali, from the Internal Medicine “F” chair, decided to take the four students who were in La Plata and belonged to his commission, to a pavilion of the San Martín hospitalwhich is the career training center.
“We needed to make contact with a patient. Feel your organs. That is the objective of this subject and there were boys who it had been more than a year and a half since they did an in-person practice. They didn’t even know how to take a pulse,” the professional told Clarion.
One of the empty classrooms of the Faculty of Medicine of the UNLP. After two years, today attendance is minimal.
In the letter of resignation, Cali raised severe criticism of driving for the decision to keep that academic unit inactive. Still, the classes they were not resumed in more than 80% of the chairs and sections. The dean who promoted this policy is Juan Basualdo Farjat, who was re-elected on Good Friday, after two failed attempts at the Board of Directors.
He was able to obtain the 11 endorsements from the cloisters for an agreement with the students. The specifications included the commitment to reopen the classrooms for the return to classes.
The teacher’s letter
The anomalous activity that ended in a sanction for Cali occurred “when the stadiums, bars, cinemas, family parties, etc. were already enabled. said the now former professor in his letter to the dean. It was produced in a time with very low community circulation of the virus and with at least one or two doses of vaccines applied. I will not expand on the criteria and care used because they have already been exposed in the administrative summary that decided to initiate me.
The letter also mentions a meeting with Basualdo Farjat in which the head of the faculty tried “to justify the university policies adopted under the protection of a somewhat esoteric story regarding access to global scientific and virological information. As if such information is only available to a select few.”
Cali integrated one of the chairs of the so-called “clinics” that are dictated from the third year of the race. Are the only ones who planned to resume attendance in 2022before the agreement for re-election.
He has been part of the list of Medicine educators for 31 years. Leave teaching dazedas he admits in his resignation: “I no longer care to stop belonging to the Staff of professionals of that faculty, since the faculty is not the same, the actors are not the same, educational excellence is not the same and above all the codes and values ceased to be those that once made me proud”.
The National University of La Plata has 17 faculties, 110,000 students enrolled and more than 100 degree courses. They all work -at least- with “bimodal” format. “The trend throughout the university is to regularize all activities,” they maintain in the Rector’s Office. More than 80,000 young people already walk through corridors and halls of the university campuses of La Plata.
Except aspiring doctors, nurses, nutritionists and obstetricians. They continue -still- with the virtuality. The start of the school year for the second year onwards was scheduled for April 26. The almost 8,000 entrants in 2022 took a four-week “virtual” course.
This also caused an inconvenience: the assistants who worked on that course did not get paid. And the person in charge of the course resigned two weeks ago.
Juan Basualdo Farjat, the Dean of Medicine of La Plata who was re-elected after two years without face-to-face classes.
The college specified a sharp turn in your admission regimen. Until 2015, between 350 and 500 students per cycle entered the first year, because there was a restrictive admission course. With a severe general examination after a course of two months, at least 70% of applicants were excluded.
There the acquaintances were specified “massive punches of Medicine”. That system was suspended in December 2015 and two years later the authorities that managed the academic unit for more than 20 years were displaced by a political armed group with the support of Peronist sectors headed by Basualdo.
Then, it went to an access of 5,700 students in 2018; 6,800 in 2019; 8,100 in 2020 and 8,300 in 2021. The faculty had to adapt with a strong increase in teachers (for the first years) and new agreements with healthcare authorities for hospital training at the end of the degree.
“The infrastructure was prepared for 400-600 per year and now over 8,000 signed up”, is one of the official arguments. The building capacity problems are included in the “specification” signed by the new dean at the request of the students.
“We need the use of 100% of the venues, of the classroom spaces, without capacity, and in all time bands. We need to expand the equipment of the chairs and with the same access for all races”, they wrote in the list.
The Silver. Correspondent
AS