The “Fact” daily writes:
New passions have flared up around Yerevan State University. The election of the Rector of YSU will take place on September 11, and in the run-up to it, public figures and lecturers have recorded numerous violations. In an interview with “Fact,” Menua Soghomonyan, a member of the “HayaQue” national civil association and former lecturer of YSU, sounds the alarm: illegality is taking place at the alma mater. “And the Board of Trustees, headed by Suren Papikyan, is at the head of this illegality.”
On August 13, the Board of Trustees of the university convened a session by request. This means that they did not gather in some room, but rather prepared the decisions from the very beginning and sent them to the members of the Board of Trustees. They convened a session and adopted a number of decisions. Among them, they decided to announce a competitive election for the Rector of the university. On August 14, an announcement about the competitive selection of the rector was posted on the university's website.
Why do I consider this illegal? According to the university charter, the rector, which is an elective position, is elected at a meeting of the Board of Trustees by closed secret ballot for a five-year term. After being elected, an employment contract is signed with him for a five-year term. The current rector, Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, was elected rector of the university on December 17, 2021, and an employment contract was signed with him for a five-year term. His term of office will expire on December 17, 2026, but a new competition announcement is issued more than four months before the end of his term of office. I assess this as a violation of the university charter, because if an announcement is made for a competition to select the rector, it means that a vacant position of the rector has arisen. Can the position of the rector be considered vacant four months before the end of the term of office? It could have been announced with the same success one or two years ago. There should be some measure of reasonableness here. Usually such announcements are made a month in advance,” says Soghomonyan. Okay, what is the reason for such a violation? According to our interlocutor, the reason is that Hovhannes Hovhannisyan is out of competition, that is, the principle of competitive selection is actually violated. “The announcement is made on August 14, it is a vacation period for the academic community.
According to the announcement, the deadline for accepting documents is set for August 31. Academic life becomes more active from approximately August 23, and for lecturers, more so from September 1. People who could be potential candidates for that position are in the midst of their vacation period, and suddenly in September they are surprised that a competition for the position of rector has been announced during their vacation. Let's go into more detail about what a potential candidate must do. He must draw up a candidate's program in order to participate in the competition. They require 14 documents, of which the most important in this case, I consider the candidate's program, which he must present to the Board of Trustees. According to the formal procedure, the Board of Trustees must familiarize themselves with that program, on the day of the election, the candidates for rector must make speeches, ask them questions, etc. Any potential candidate who was thinking about running for the position of rector knew that the election of YSU rector would be held in December, as Hovhannes Hovhannisyan was elected in December 2021.
A person has a long time to work, to collect all the documents, to draw up a program, because it is not a creative essay that you write, you have to study data, etc. And in this situation, Hovhannes Hovhannisyan gains a disproportionate and unacceptable competitive advantage over his other potential competitors. It is no coincidence that the deadline for accepting documents ends on August 31, and apart from Hovhannes Hovhannisyan, no one has applied to participate in the competition. On September 2, an announcement was posted on the university website, from which it becomes clear that the only candidate for the rector is Hovhannes Hovhannisyan,” our interlocutor notes. All this is not enough, it turns out that during the session on August 13, a new procedure for selecting the rector was adopted by inquiry. “The current one was recognized as invalid, a new procedure was developed, adopted, but not published. Is it important for the candidate to be aware of this new procedure? For example, understanding how long the speech will be, how the vote counting will take place, there are many questions.
"By not posting the procedure, they are subjecting any potential candidate to an information "blockade" and are conducting a rector election," concludes Menua Soghomonyan. We contacted YSU Rector's Press Secretary Knar Misakyan to get clarification on the new and unpublished procedure for the election of the YSU rector, the election of the rector to be held ahead of schedule, and other issues. She responded that she would clarify whether the university has a position on these issues, and added that she would contact us both if she had one and if she did not. She did not contact us by the end of the working day, nor did she answer our phone call, although we had informed her that we were preparing a publication, which would be published in the next day's (today's) issue. Nevertheless, we are still ready to publish YSU's position on these issues, if, of course, there is a position.
