The Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) has proposed restructuring its governing body by slashing the number of internal members and allowing outsiders to take up a majority of the seats, raising concerns about the institution’s autonomy.
The university said it was planning to remove all eight faculty deans from the council and add one external member, local media outlets reported on Monday. The entire council would be downsized as well, from the current 36 members to 28.
Out of all eight publicly-funded universities, HKBU’s council currently has the smallest proportion of internal members, with internal and external council members each making up half of the school’s governing body.
If the restructuring goes ahead, 19 of the 28 members would be external members, meaning they would take up 68 per cent – a majority – of seats in the council.
HKBU told local media outlets that the amendment would allow the university to be accountable to the public. HKFP has reached out to the university for comment.
A spokesperson for the university also said the council had earlier set up a task force to propose a legislative amendment for the council’s restructuring after taking reference from other local universities’ arrangements, local media reported.
The proposal could also see the number of seats elected by university staff and the number of seats from members of the university senate – the body responsible for academic matters and student welfare – cut from two each to one.
‘Singular voice’
The university also suggested scrapping its practice of granting the president of the student union a seat on the council by default. Instead, undergraduate and postgraduate students will elect one representative each, HKBU proposed.
But it also said the council’s student representatives should be excluded from disciplinary proceedings against individual students, appointments, or any matters deemed inappropriate by the council chair.
According to the Hong Kong Baptist University Ordinance, the president of the student union “is not entitled to participate in considering the appointment, promotion or personal affairs of individual officers, teachers and other staff members or the admission or academic assessment of individual students.”
Former external vice-president of the HKBU Student Union Edwin Dai, who was barred from participating in school affairs earlier this April, told local media outlets that the proposals would raise concerns about whether the institution was only allowing a “singular voice” to be heard on the school board.
Speaking to HKFP, Dai said the proposal to change the way that student representatives are elected would undermine the influence and legitimacy of the student union, which is itself elected by undergraduates.
“The devil is in the details,” said Dai, a second-year Government & International Studies major at HKBU. He added that while an extra seat had been carved out for a postgraduate student, external councillors would still take a majority in the council.
“Losing all eight faculty deans would mean that the voices of academic staff and students would no longer be heard in the council,” he said, raising students’ recent objections to the university’s plan to merge its arts and social science faculties as an example.
Dai also said the university’s rationale for the shake-up assumed that internal council members could not be accountable to the public, calling the move “unreasonable.”
Dai was among three others in the student union who were barred from participating in school affairs for 16 months in April over what the university called a “biased” manifesto published by the student group. The student union later released a leaked recording in which a school representative told them he would “kick back” if the student leaders continued to protest.
The university’s move came after the city’s legislature passed a controversial bill to significantly reduce the influence of staff and academics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Critics of the reform said it could hurt the university’s autonomy.
After the bill was passed, the council fired one of its vice-presidents, Eric Ng, last week, citing “a loss of confidence” in the senior officer’s ability to support future work.
The vice-president, however, said he was not given a chance to defend himself and that such allegations constituted “serious injustice.”
