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Frankfurt University: Questionable secrecy about the presidential election

2022-12-19T14:35:24.962Z


The Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences has declined to name all candidates for the presidency. This is legally questionable.


Last week, the public found out who will head the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences in the future - but not who, apart from the election winner Kai-Oliver Schocke, was up for vote in the extended Senate.

When asked, the university refused to provide information on all applicants that the election committee had to decide on Wednesday.

On the instructions of the election officer, the press office also kept the number of votes that industrial engineer Schocke received to itself.

Universities do have some leeway when it comes to how comprehensively they provide information about the selection of their managerial staff.

However, it is at least doubtful whether Frankfurt University acted appropriately in this case.

Sasha Zoske

Sheet maker in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Election manager Andrea Ruppert justified her decision with the university’s personal election regulations.

It states that candidates for the presidency who have been found suitable by the selection committee are to be questioned “in a public session of the extended senate”.

Elsewhere in the election regulations, however, this hearing is referred to as a "public survey" to which "the public" is also to be invited via the Internet, stating the names of those selected.

The names of the applicants would then be known at the latest.

In the current case, the university had at least not explicitly invited the press to the hearing, which is why the FAZ did not report on it.

With regard to the election result itself, the election regulations state that it must be made “public” after a presidential election.

Hiding the names "to protect the candidates"

Ruppert says the decision was made "to protect the candidates" and at their own request not to give their names outside of the university.

According to the professor of business law, the consideration of avoiding public disputes also played a role.

In 2014, a professor at what was then the University of Applied Sciences initially tried to force a postponement of the presidential election with an urgent application to the administrative court because she had not been admitted;

she later withdrew the application.

At that time, the candidates to be voted on had become publicly known at an early stage.

According to Ruppert, in the most recent election, which Schocke won, there was another internal candidate to vote for, and a third external candidate withdrew her candidacy.

The Hessian Ministry of Science points out that Frankfurt University has the right within the framework of university autonomy to determine to what extent it involves the public in a presidential election.

The basis for the decision is the electoral regulations of the university.

In the case of the presidential election, this had to be weighed up between the public interest in announcing the candidates and the right of the (loser) candidates to protection of their privacy.

According to the Hessian press law, state authorities could withhold information if it concerned “personal matters of individuals”.

“University presidents are public figures”

Markus Ogorek, Director of the Institute for Public Law and Administrative Sciences at the University of Cologne, doubts that the assessment made by Frankfurt University is correct.

The presidency comes with a wide range of powers, and universities are very important to their region.

In view of this, there is little reason to grant candidates for such an office an excessively high interest in protection, says the former President of the EBS University of Economics and Law.

“University presidents are public figures;

this cannot be hidden in the context of the upstream selection process either."

Ogorek interprets Frankfurt University's electoral regulations in such a way that the names of the candidates should be announced to the public at an early stage - namely with the invitation to the hearing.

The fact that the election regulations provide for the announcement of the election winner as the next public announcement does not rule out interim information.

A university must remember that, as part of society, it is obliged to be transparent.

"The legitimacy of the selection process would suffer if you wanted to hide even those shortlisted candidates from the public."

Election manager Ruppert meanwhile indicates that she wants to deal with the criticism of her university's information practices: "We will certainly tackle the election regulations again."

Source: faz

All news articles on 2022-12-19

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