The appointment of a new Christian director for Lebanese University’s Economics and Business faculty in Tripoli sparked a new round of protests Friday.
Students blocked the entrance to their university buildings in the morning, a day after Jamila Yammin was appointed as the new director for the faculty.
A student from the university told The Daily Star that protesters blocked the entrances, made loud noises and destroyed exam papers to prevent students from taking tests.
The student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the demonstrators were all members of the Future Movement and its allied political parties. A large number of them were not students, she added.
She said only a few students supported the protests, and the majority “do not care about the religious affiliation of the director.”
LU President Adnan Sayyed Hussein appointed Yammin Thursday based on the recommendation of the faculty’s dean and its board of directors, a senior professor told The Daily Star.
Classes had been suspended at the school since Hussein appointed Antoine Tannous, another Christian LU professor, to head the faculty six weeks ago.
The protesters and political parties in Tripoli are demanding a Sunni Muslim director for the faculty, also known as the Third Branch, since the two other major branches are headed by a Shiite and a Christian.
The movement against the appointment was supported by rival Sunni factions, including the Future Movement and supporters of former Prime Minister Najib Mikati.
They complain that Hussein does not discuss the appointment of Sunni directors with Sunni parties and accuse him of ignoring the tradition of maintaining an equal number of Sunni and Shiite LU directors, a norm which had prevailed in previous years.
