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Students denounce possible intimidation and even threats of expulsion for requesting that the controversial title of the liberal senator be withdrawn. There is instability and uncertainty in the institution.
In the midst of happiness at having been received as professionals, several law students from the University of Medellín, who graduated on March 1, 2019, expressed their surprise and annoyance because Senator Julián Bedoya received his lawyer card together with them . Some wondered at what time the politician had completed the degree, when they had never seen him in the classrooms, while others questioned him because of the indications and investigations he had at that time. This first discomfort was only the prelude to all the complications that the subsequent investigations brought about for the institution and its students due to the alleged irregularities in the express degree of the liberal legislator.
Bedoya’s feat – going back to university a little less than a decade after having paused his studies to present and pass 16 exams, between proficiency and preparatory, in just four days – put the magnifying glass of the authorities both in the institution and in the professors, directors, rector and the congressman himself. That is why the Attorney General’s Office, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General’s Office and even the Ministry of Education have begun investigations to clarify what happened at the end of 2018, when the Antioquia congressman returned to the cloister and approved all the requirements to graduate in less than four months. The truth is that the different processes resulted in great instability and uncertainty for the institution.
In February of this year, Néstor Hincapié, rector of the University of Medellín since 2000, submitted his resignation due to these events, while the situation inside the cloister became increasingly difficult due to allegations of corruption, doubts regarding the reaccreditation process that was carried out before the Ministry of Education, before the scandal broke out, and requests for greater transparency and participation by students. They demanded that Bedoya’s title be taken away and a tumble inside the institution, considering that they had no participation in the government of the university and that it supposedly behaved as a political directory of the department’s liberals, an approach established by Hincapié .
Several students who have been part of the claims have denounced that the university’s response was a harsh persecution, which would even have one of them at risk of being expelled. This is the law student Germán Arenas, one of those who has asked the most for an answer to the Bedoya case. On December 3, he received a summons to discharges for a disciplinary process against him by an opinion column in which he criticized the institution and the situation that had been going on for just over a year. Supposedly, the text may have violated several articles of the university regulations, which require students to have respectful treatment with the community and to avoid the “elaboration or dissemination of writings that contain grotesque, degrading, infamous or threatening allusions.”
The writing in question is a satire that Arenas published on June 12 on the site alponiente.com. According to the student, “I wanted to criticize the statutory reform, which did not take us into account and established a lot of requirements to be a student representative, but none to be rector.” The column questions the situation after the Bedoya scandal, the power of former rector Hincapié in the interim administration and the disparity of requirements to be a student representative. And he speaks, in a mocking tone, of some requirements that are very easy to fulfill to be rector, while the students would even have to “have added five theses to the 95 of Martin Luther written in 1517”.
On July 1, Arenas received a request for rectification from Hincapié’s successor, César Guerra Arroyave. For the new rector, these were “statements aimed at insulting both the University of Medellín as an institution, as well as the rector of the same, its directors and all those who participate in the drafting commission of the statutory reform.” Guerra also pointed out that the text had affected his “moral patrimony”, since in the section on the requirements to be rector there was talk of “transferring 50% of his salary” to Hincapié so that he can exercise his functions “of control , surveillance and titiritazgo ”and“ disappear a box full of reports of acts of abuse and sexual harassment ”.
“His opinions (those of Arenas) regarding the reform are still an insult that borders on the libelous, of which no proof is provided,” he said, giving him a period of 24 hours to retract or “the actions would be taken corresponding legal “. On August 3, Arenas replied that he had nothing to rectify, since his writing was satirical and “respected all the standards of freedom of expression developed by the honorable Constitutional Court.” And he invited the new rector to be respectful of criticism and be “the first defender of freedom of expression and opinion” at the university. Since then there has been no news of possible legal or disciplinary actions, until this month, when the summons to discharges arrived.
According to the student, the disciplinary action is a sign that they do not tolerate criticism and is an attempt to intimidate, because on November 3 he presented a tutelage in which he pointed out that the political rights of the students had been violated, since their participation with voice and vote was not included in the statutory reform. “It’s not a coincidence, why didn’t they do it in July? We showed them that there is a serious irregularity that could overturn the entire reform and the election of the new rector, and we asked that they suspend the election until this was solved ”, commented Arenas. Regarding the case, the former IACHR rapporteur for freedom of expression Catalina Botero pointed out in networks that “a disciplinary process for that – the column – is disproportionate. If they go ahead, there is no doubt that they would be violating Article 20 (of the Constitution) ”.
On the other hand, the University of Medellín replied to this newspaper that “at no time is freedom of expression being attacked.” He also assured that no determination has been made, but that possible faults are being investigated before the notification of the column by the rectory and a negative response to a rectification. In addition, commented the dean of law, José Luis Jiménez, the student has all the guarantees, which includes an investigation commission with the student representative and a spokesperson for the graduates who is a criminal circuit judge, “who can say if there is a crime ”. “The development of the investigation will tell if it is satire or lack of respect,” he emphasized.
The dean denied that it was retaliation, since the column’s notification, supposedly, came from the rectory on October 30, days before the tutelage was established. However, although the dean insisted that the university had not commented on the letter, Beatriz Oquendo, head of communications, assured that the Arenas issue “is not a satire” because “flagrantly he says that Dr. César Guerra gives him half of his salary to ex-rector Hincapié and files of sexual violence were hidden ”. And he stressed that, when signing the enrollment, the students assume a regulation by which they must be governed and in which, in his light, Arenas would have exceeded the limits. Despite giving his concept, Oquendo assured that all guarantees have been given.
Faced with these latest remarks made by the directive, the student replied “that they learn to read”, since I have never said that the current rector is giving part of his salary, but that “it is ridiculed that the university government continues to operate under the designs by Néstor Hincapié ”. He also said that it was not said that Guerra was the one who disappeared the box with complaints of sexual violence, but that he has done nothing to clarify what happened. Arenas refers to a campaign carried out by a feminist group of the institution so that anonymous complaints of cases of gender violence at the university were put in a box, but this was lost. When claiming for the disappearance, the institution’s networks responded mockingly: “We don’t have it” and “let the umbrellas also appear.”
But beyond this disciplinary process, Arenas said that the clashes with the rector are not new and that even in an event he would have come to brand him as “dangerous.” This event would have occurred in a conference called by the student, in which experts from the World Bank were invited. Specifically, one of these would have told Guerra that he had a great leader in his institution, and he would have responded “yes, I know, but he can be dangerous.” Although the expert confirmed this dialogue, El Espectador questioned the institution about this episode and was denied. For the student, these facts are part of a persecutory attitude from the university that began “when we asked that Bedoya’s title be annulled and the general assembly of students was organized.”
To illustrate the situation, he points out that on one occasion the university had pamphlets pointing out that he and a colleague, Sara Jaramillo, had been infiltrated by Antioquia and had hidden interests. Jaramillo, who is now a student representative, confirmed that these actions began with the mess of the title of the liberal senator, because before his claims were resolved with “cloths of warm water, and with that scandal they saw us as a danger. The university had been moving like a political directory and this situation made it even more evident and showed what the relationship with the Liberal Party was like. He also added that the actions against them included comments from professors and even anonymous threats, which included the publication of information about the scholarship that Arenas had and its financing, data that only the institution should have.
