EdUHK ceases to recognize the student union

The Education University of Hong Kong said it will no longer recognize the student union, citing them "not authorized by students and lacks representation."  

The university said it will stop collecting fees on behalf of the union and take back their premises.  

The union will also no longer have the right to manage campus facilities or venues and will not receive any email or network support from the university.  

In addition, the union's reserves of HK$9 million will be temporarily taken over by the Finance Office.  

In an email sent to all students and faculty, the university stated that the student union has had governance problems for years and has been operating as a provisional executive council for four years.   

Plus, changes to the union's constitution in 2016 resulted in a significant reduction in membership, with nearly one-third of full-time students not being its members.  

The university said it has recently learned that the union still could not form an executive council in the coming year.  

The provisional executive council is preparing to amend the constitution to lower its number of basic members and provisional editorial board to four, which the university would see as further weakening the representativeness.  

Therefore, the university decided that the student union is not authorized by students and lacks representativeness after a comprehensive review.

Meanwhile, the Chinese University of Hong Kong is directly recruiting student representatives of 25 University Committees now that its student union is disbanded.

The Office of Student Affairs is to oversee the nomination process previously coordinated by the student union.

Selected nominations would be submitted to a selection panel consisting of members from other student bodies, colleges or related Committees, and the respective committees reserve the right to have the final decision upon the nomination or appointment, the university said.

Incumbent representatives were worried about students having less say in university policies.

"There is fear over the possibility of student representatives losing their free will in voting procedures which, in turn, increases the difficulty in monitoring campus affairs," the student press said.