Internal AUM chats contradict university’s narrative about student hostel

“Sometimes, we look at the glass half empty, but sometimes, we really need to look at the glass half full,” says an American University of Malta (AUM) staffer named Andrea Fouad, at the start of a video uploaded on the university’s Instagram page.

The video, described as “a real tour” in which AUM opens the doors of its student hostel to “show the full picture”, is a thinly-veiled jibe aimed at The Shift following publication of footage which exposed the hostel’s decrepit conditions.

In actual fact, AUM’s social media narrative is contradicted not just by The Shift’s footage, but also by its own internal correspondence with students living in the hostel.

In the video uploaded to AUM’s Instagram page, viewers are treated to a carefully curated tour of the hostel’s student lounge, two of the students’ rooms, bathrooms, and a common kitchen area.

Though AUM was given ample time to respond to The Shift’s questions about the student hostel as well as other recent stories published by this website, the video nonetheless attempts to convince viewers to “please double check anything” they see online, “especially if it’s not from a trusted or reliable source.”

Besides being careful not to mention The Shift’s reporting directly but instead merely alluding to it, AUM’s video also omits showing the floors within the building which had to be closed off due to safety risks.

No reference is made to the site’s long history of planning illegalities, which can be confirmed with a quick search on the Planning Authority’s MapServer.

When grounded in the context of this website’s reporting, AUM’s Instagram post effectively amounts to an attempt at fending off further scrutiny of its operations without directly responding to questions which fall outside of a narrative it can control.

In addition, sources consulted by The Shift confirmed additional problems which the video attempts to obscure.

Internal WhatsApp chats, snippets of which have been reproduced below for additional context, show how AUM asked students to reduce gas consumption in a building with no central heating, unkempt promises to fix issues with the hostel’s hot water supply, and a text advising students to temporarily vacate all six floors of the premises for “routing spraying” carried out by a pest control team.

Sources familiar with the hostel’s layout further informed this website that the main student room shown in the video is the only single-person room in the hostel, and naturally costs more than all the other shared rooms available for rent.

Yet again, AUM chose not to reply to this website’s questions prior publication of this article, refusing to explain why students are being asked to ration gas use in accommodation they are already paying for, whether it can disclose copies of inspection documents confirming the building’s water supply has been fixed, nor did it share any information about whether there are any pest control issues on the site.

The person who speaks first in AUM’s video, Andrea Fouad, was brought in by AUM as an external consultant through her firm AFN Investment. Fouad has an extensive background in the oil and gas industry prior her transition to business development. The other persons in the footage are AUM employees, including students with part-time roles at the university itself.

The beleaguered university, whose student population is but a fraction of the thousands of students it promised over a decade ago, has maintained a consistent pattern of silence – even in the face of extremely serious allegations.

Last week, AUM did not issue any response to this website’s report about how its head of student affairs, David O’ Shaughnessy, told a cohort of female Afghan students that the university would go out of its way to get them deported to their country of origin should they decide to leave Malta without permission, in spite of the fact that many of those students would be facing almost certain torture at the hands of the Taliban.

After the abrupt resignation of AUM’s last rector in December, AUM has now appointed a successor, President Ghassan Al-Qaimari. Al-Qaimari is a professor of computer science and software engineering, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The appointment marks the university’s latest attempt at reviving its ailing student campus, with the total annual headcount amounting to less than 200 students at its peak.

The university’s failure to make use of the incredibly cheap land it was allowed to buy up in Smart City, coupled with the decrepit conditions in its student hostel and the rotating cast of characters in the institution’s leadership roles, raises further questions about the overall viability of the institution.

In fact, insiders familiar with AUM’s operations described its recent claim of private ownership over five metres of sea in front of its campus in Bormla as “a reckless move”. The clawback of previously public water space was further described as an attempt at maximising profits that the institution can extract out of the concession.