Exams at All Lebanese University Branches Postponed to June 9

Final exams at all branches of the Lebanese University have been postponed to June 9, as teachers demanding that they be signed as full-time faculty members announced boycotting the preparation and the correction of tests.

The decision was taken on Saturday afternoon during an emergency meeting of the LU's deans, which discussed “the situation the university is suffering from amid the neglect of its (faculty's) demands.”

"We have decided to put off all exams at all branches of the university to June 9, 2014,” the conferees announced after the meeting which was held under the chairmanship of LU President Adan Sayyed Hussein.

They explained that the decision was taken to preserve “the interests of teachers and their rightful demands, and to stress the LU's determination to recuperate its full powers.”

The board of deans also called for a “wide campaign of national solidarity with the university's demands.”

But later in the evening, Education Minister Elias Bou Saab demanded teachers at the LU to prepare exam questions.

"Both files of the full-timers and of deans are nearing a solution," he told MTV.

Lebanese University contract professors had held a sit-in on Friday during which they declared from the Riad al-Solh Square that "no exams will be held before the officials succeed in the exam of approving our full-time appointment.”

“We will not lay out the questions of the exams except after the officials answer our questions,” the professors stressed.

In its first session amid the presidential vacuum, the cabinet on Friday discussed its powers following former President Michel Suleiman's departure, but it did not put a stake the future of LU.

S.D.B.