‘No safety concerns’: after 10 months, HKU governing council will meet on main campus again
Council chairman Arthur Li declines to say if move is related to Billy Fung stepping down as student union president
For the first time in 10 months, the University of Hong Kong’s governing council will meet at the institution’s main campus as there will be “no safety concerns”, the council’s chairman said on Thursday.
The meeting on Tuesday will also be the first for new HKU student union president Althea Suen, who succeeded Billy Fung Jing-en in February.
From August last year to January, council meetings were held at the university’s Sassoon Road campus, after students and protesters stormed a meeting in July to protest against the council’s “mishandling” of liberal scholar Johannes Chan Man-mun’s promotion, which was eventually rejected.
The meeting venue was again moved to Wan Chai in February and then to Admiralty last month after students besieged the council in January, calling for its chair Professor Arthur Li Kwok-cheung to heed their demands about reviewing the council’s structure, which they feared was susceptible to political interference.
Li, 70, had accused Fung of playing a key role in the protests and the siege, but speaking in an interview with Democratic Party chairwoman Emily Lau Wai-hing on Thursday, he declined to say if they were returning to the main campus because Fung had stepped down.
“It was out of safety considerations as many of our councillors are women or are quite old,” he said. “It was the university that told us it should be OK for us to meet at Knowles Building [at the main campus]. Maybe next time we will be going to Sassoon Road or Admiralty again.”