Medicine FSR suspends opposition council member
The Faculty Student Council (FSR) of the Faculty of Medicine has suspended a council member from the Activistenpartij. The decision, backed by majority party Partij MFAS, follows months of tensions within the representative body.
An insufficiently professional attitude and undermining trust in the council. These were the arguments put to Medicine FSR member Nader Khalaf Karam (Activistenpartij) when he was informed at the end of July that he would be placed on inactive status. A majority of the faculty’s representative council, which is dominated by Partij MFAS, backed a motion removing Khalaf Karam from his duties.
According to the Internal Regulations of the Medicine FSR, being placed on inactive status means that a council member no longer “represents the voice of the council” and is no longer allowed to contribute to ongoing cases.
At loggerheads
Partij MFAS and Activistenpartij member Khalaf Karam had been at odds for some time. The two parties clashed particularly sharply over the allocation of faculty funds, including a proposal to use modernisation funds for the Epsteinbar – a facility that is generally accessible only to members of the Partij MFAS-affiliated study association MFAS.
The two parties were also far apart when it came to conduct. According to Khalaf Karam, the faculty council has become an “unprofessional body”: “You notice that the culture of the student association – the climate of inappropriate jokes and bullying – is being brought into the student council chamber.” Among other things, he complained about inappropriate comments in the shared group chat, personal insults directed at him, and the use of student council funds to purchase spirits.
Improvement process
Partij MFAS, meanwhile, criticised Khalaf Karam’s conduct, according to a confidential agenda item briefing seen by Folia. An “improvement process” was initiated, among other things aimed at getting Khalaf Karam to “stop undermining trust in the council by sharing disagreements with the council as a whole or with fellow council members with third parties”. The motion to place Khalaf Karam on inactive status followed after he approached Folia with concerns about the way the council was operating.
“I think it would be better for everyone if we no longer had to work together,” a Partij MFAS council member commented on the proposed motion. A majority of the council backed that position. FSR chair Bas Laan subsequently informed Khalaf Karam that, due to his suspension, he was not allowed to take part in the handover to the new council for the upcoming academic year. Khalaf Karam was re-elected to that council in May, but because of the strained relations, he decided not to take up his new seat.
“Absurd”
In a response, Khalaf Karam calls his placement on inactive status “absurd” and says he plans to contact the faculty dean and the UvA Executive Board. “I will ask them to launch an investigation into what has been going on within the student council and into the fact that council members who disagree politically can apparently try to bully and sideline each other in this way.”
FSR response
The FSR emphasises that Khalaf Karam has not been removed from his seat and still has voting rights on the council. His inactive status “is an internal measure based on the internal regulations and does not terminate his democratically elected mandate”. In a response, the council says that “following a six-week improvement process”, it unanimously decided to impose the measure, in a vote from which Khalaf Karam was excluded because of his personal interests. According to the FSR, the improvement process was “not prompted by political or substantive disagreements”, but by “concerns about internal cooperation, communication on behalf of the council with external parties, transparency regarding casework, and compliance with working agreements”.
The council says it regrets that Khalaf Karam experienced the cooperation as unprofessional or unsafe and says it does not recognise “the picture that there was bullying or that political differences were the reason for the measure”. The FSR also rejects “the suggestion that student council funds were spent on spirits during the current council year”. Should an investigation take place, the FSR says it will cooperate.
The seat distribution of the Medicine FSR for the upcoming academic year:
![Vacature hoofdredacteur [2]](https://www.folia.nl/uploads/6a8c16f7ed6ce79dbea1bfed712a7f1d0a01c5493a2eb.gif)
