Smearing from both sides in the University of Hong Kong’s saga over the delayed election of a pro-vice-chancellor has blurred the issue and politicised the campus, says Baptist University’s new chief, Professor Roland Chin Tai-hong. Chin – whose own appointment in May upset university officials and students, who said they should have been consulted more on the decision. He said students who voiced out in the multi-month controversy “were speaking out against injustices in society” and that “professors should also speak out against injustice”. HKU’s governing council has been caught up in a row over the appointment of former law dean Professor Johannes Chan Man-mun. Pan-democrats claim the delay is linked to Chan’s ties to Occupy Central co-founder Benny Tai Yiu-ting. Chin said Hongkongers were now more willing to take action to express discontent since the Occupy movement and this had spread to campuses. But it was the storming and mutual smearing that had blurred the issue. His comments refer to the students’ interruption in a meeting of HKU’s governing council this July after another delay in the election of a pro-vice-chancellor HKU council member Professor Arthur Li Kwok-cheung referred to students who stormed the meeting as “red guards”. Chin said students should adopt a different strategy if they wanted to win public approval rather than interrupting a official meeting. He made the remarks in an interview published in the latest issue of Jumbo, the publication of Baptist University’s students’ union.