Students at the University of Haifa were unable on Monday to register for Student Union elections, despite arriving on time. Some told the media that they felt the union had “deliberately delayed” their registration.
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Students arrived at the location at around 9 a.m. to complete the form, which was supposed to take only a couple of minutes to fill out; the requirements were ID number, name, faculty, and signature.
It took five students nearly three hours to complete. As a result, no other students were permitted to enter and complete the form.
Students told The Jerusalem Post that the five who succeeded in completing the form were the current union members who had been seeking reelection.
Blocked from registering
“Five current student union members seeking reelection engaged in deliberate attempts to block other students from registering. Each of these individuals took an astonishing 50 minutes to complete a process designed to take mere moments,” Mutaz, a first-year economics student, said.
He added that both a disabled person and a woman with a child were prevented from registering promptly; both are visible in footage from the event.
He also described several more tactics that he says were used to unfairly deny entry to students who had been present since 9 a.m., including requesting the arrival of paramedics only minutes before the registration closed.
“This was a clear tactic to run down the clock and exclude other potential candidates,” he said.
Another student who didn’t want to be named registered the day before and told the Post it had taken him only a couple of minutes to fill out the form.
He described how current members of the union arrived early on Monday and then took between 40 minutes and an hour to fill out the same form, blocking around 40 candidates from different sectors and parties from registering.
“We, as members of the union, have a right to vote for candidates and be voted for, or at the very least to apply to be candidates,” he said.
He said that the obstruction was done in conjunction with the student union president, who was seen inside the registration office.
“We are not going to give up; we will continue to fight for our democratic rights. This is shameful!”
Shouts can be heard during some videos, asking how this was democratic, followed by calls of “shame” directed toward the university staff.
Students at the university have been organizing to challenge the sitting union members but have faced persistent challenges and obstructions.
Persistent interference
Shareef Safadi, a member of the activist group Standing Together and a recent graduate, described to the Post some of the preparations for this year’s election and the roadblocks that were imposed by the union.
While preparing for this year’s election, which usually occurs in December, a few months into the academic year, they discovered that the union had quietly announced an early registration process. This violates current regulations that state it must be opened in the first semester, which has not yet begun.
“We found out the union had secretly announced the opening of the registration process in a message hidden deep on their website, a website that barely anyone visits,” he said.
He also highlighted the context that registrations had been opened during summer break when a majority of the student body would not be in the area.
Despite these obstacles, students organized to the new rules, attempting to cram two months of preparation into a few days. Many offered to register candidates by proxy, which led to the union adding a new requirement that all candidates register in person.
Undeterred, the students persevered and organized to bring as many people as possible to register on the day in person during the officially permitted hours between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m.
This led to today’s events wherein dozens of people were blocked from registering as candidates until the deadline had passed.
The only candidates who were eventually permitted to enter were the disabled student and the mother, despite them being required to receive priority.
Queried by the Post, the university said: “We emphasize that the student union is an independent association that operates according to law and is subject to the audit of the registrar of associations. And Haifa University has no formal standing to intervene in the association’s affairs. However, the university saw fit to contact the association and emphasize to it that it expects the election process to be proper and fair.”