They condemn the “tampering” with the study plans of the UNLP Faculty of Medicine

Among the many professions pursued by university students in La Plata, medicine is one of the most complex, due to the academic path, the intensity of study and the number of young people enrolled. In this direction, the complications that may arise do not always depend on the students' performance; In fact, there are also emergencies that go beyond the personal or collective level, and relate to other areas. For example, within the Faculty of Medical Sciences (FCM) of the University of La Plata (UNLP), a serious complaint has arisen again about changes in study plans affecting people who are about to graduate.

According to what was issued by a law firm defending some of the victims, “The current administration of Dar al-Drasat has ordered measures that affect the lives of many of its students, who, due to the whims of the current authorities, are forcing them to extend their studies, and to modify study plans in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner, with students who were far away.” Two or three years of graduation and forcing them to take another two or three years of study, which is unprecedented at the university level. More than 50 students denounced the changes shortly after they graduated as doctors and filed an administrative appeal with the college and its authorities.

“At the end of November 2023, through a memo posted on a college notice board, the Academic Secretary (Mario San Mauro), in internal communication with the Director of Education (Eleonora Sposito), ordered that “those who have not done so will not perform a final before the school closes ( March 31) – Taking into account the proximity of the holidays and that in January there are no tables -, they will lose their regularity and will go to the current plan, while all those who fulfilled this condition will continue with the previous plans. (Because of this issue) many students did not find out until the beginning of March,” they said in a statement issued by the law firm David & Asoc, which sponsored the students’ claim, referring to the complications caused by this adjustment in relation to the closure of the academic year and with the December schedules in the above.

As a result of this case, they filed a “challenge to administrative laws” in which they condemned “dangerous unofficial actions and prerogatives,” as well as “violation of constitutional rights” and “serious violation of students’ rights.” They also demanded “serious tampering with public tools” before the college and the authorities, and were ultimately accused of “manipulating and severely changing study plans.” In the memorandum signed and dated April 17, they requested “the intervention of the UNLP Supreme Council” in order to “reach an immediate solution” to the issue.

“It is an unfair and irregular situation for medical students,” one student said.

They also added from the legal body that defends the affected students, “These measures – of questionable legality – were taken by the academic secretary of the college in an ‘internal communication’, which, in principle, should have been issued by the Supreme Council.” The University, after processing by the College Board of Directors itself, entails a modification in the study plan, which affects all students who are not studying according to the current study plan.

This case has similar connotations to those that occurred in 2014 and 2018. In the first case, due to an academic conflict similar to the one presented, a group of 80 doctors were denounced as a “danger to public health” by the country’s authorities. That college. Then, six years ago, the reason for the “caution” was an event: it consisted of graduating students through a judicial appeal to protect against a complaint about changes to study plans in the previous administration.

“Currently, 4 different study plans at the College and up to 8 parallel study plans coexist, in a scenario of complete uncertainty, since there is no subject equivalency system that would be applied if students move to the current plan. In addition, students must They gladly endure having their academic history redacted by the authorities to adapt it to the study plan they are trying to impose, which is very dangerous because the college is unilaterally amending public documents that record the students' academic history, their time in college and what they have done, which should not be modified by changing plans Coursework, where the date is not modified, and the deletion of the courses taken and the finals is to delete the events that occurred, to falsify the public documents and to render meaningless the effort expended in carrying out each course, which entails a criminal offense, embodied in our National Penal Code, set forth in Articles. 292 and 294.”

In the first person

In an interview with EL DIA, one of the students decided to tell her story. “They informed us on November 28, almost at the end of the year, that if we lost the system, we would have to request readmission, which is generally an automatic procedure. What they were going to do was apply the current plan to us, meaning we would be readmitted, but in the plan Current studies, which means changing the studies for us. They also said that re-admission will take place with the equations in question, and here our journey began in search of the equations that were not published in time. The student said: “We found different information about which subjects will be recognized and which ones “It will not be recognized.”

Regarding how to submit the claim, the student said: “We decided to request meetings with the authorities, and the first meeting was in December. We also had meetings in February and April with the Academic Secretary to provide us with the resolution by which our equivalencies were recognised. First, they gave us Resolution 1008, from 2018, which actually doesn't apply to us in this case. After several consultations, on April 9, the academic secretary told us verbally about the equations, and when we asked him for her decision number, it turned out that the decision did not exist. For this reason, we requested its publication, even though only a grid containing a large snippet of our academic history has been published.

“This all started at the end of last year, with no performance space and with the situation that many colleagues did not have exams left in order to maintain the regularity required of us. He pointed out that in addition to the lack of planning and controls, it turned out that some materials were scanned when We change plans, thus violating the birthright of taking a course or passing an exam.

Regarding what this group of students is saying, he emphasized, “We are all advanced students in the program and we have many colleagues who are one, two, or three finals away from receiving and graduating from the program.” “In the midst of this economic crisis, and above all the budget crisis for universities, we suggest that it does not make sense to extend the degree of students who are one or two months away from graduation. He asked, “Why prolong the career for another two or three years?” He, in turn, added: “As for re-admission, we find empty or incomplete analyses, as downloading is currently done manually.”

“It is a very unfair and irregular situation for students. The change in study plans has not been done in an organized and consensual way. Moreover, a large part of our academic history is unknown, and we have, in some subjects, much more hours than the current plan currently contains, and with Moreover, these hours are not recognized for us as well. At the same time, he pointed out that “the authorities do not show a willingness to solve this problem with the students and thus facilitate our exit from the college.”

He concluded, “In health crises, it is important to provide doctors to the health system, so hindering or prolonging the professional lives of students who are about to graduate is contradictory.”