Dear Mr. Editor,
The University of Guyana needs to take its mandate seriously.
I find it appalling that Guyana’s principal tertiary institution cannot get its act together. It has been over a month since the scheduled reopening of the University of Guyana and yet the public has not been told a definitive date for the actual reopening. It is getting to the point of being ridiculous.
There are quite a number of foreign students who wasted their time and money coming to Guyana since the administration at the University of Guyana did not find it necessary to advise their foreign students about the extremely late start of classes. Nonetheless, they are here and we are all anxiously awaiting the start of classes.
I am curious to know what the University has planned in order to keep their semester system in place. I am quite sure that we students will be placed in a position where we will be moving from one semester into the other. Of particular importance is whether lecturers will be up to the task of making examination results available in a short span of time. We must consider that during a regular school year they are given ample time to do just that but still fall short at times. How are we to expect that they will make these results available in a matter of days?
I must turn now to the peculiar situation that I, along with many other law students, find myself in. As a third year student I am worried that my grades will not be available on time for admission into the Hugh Wooding Law School. We require 13 weeks of classes per semester and starting classes anytime after November will be cutting it really close. There are a number of things to be taken into consideration as well. Our examination scripts are sent to Barbados to be second-marked. This will take some time. Then we must consider that some students may fail an examination and need to write a supplemental, what happens then? I wish someone would give me some straightforward answers. Is the administration at the University of Guyana paying any attention to this? Where are the opposition parties who are quick to chastise the government in every other way? Isn’t the education of the future generation important?
It’s not that we students are sitting idly by waiting on UG to tell us something. We have actually held meetings and have managed to secure locations for holding classes. You would think that our own Head of Department would support us. Instead, he said that UG will reopen on 13 October and he will not support starting classes anytime before that date. Well, I must tell you we were disappointed, considering the situation we are in, but we said we’ll wait a couple more weeks. The 13th October came and went and yet no reopening of campus, but our Head of Department still will not support holding classes at alternative venues.
The Univer-sity needs to be proactive not reactive. How is it that they could not have seen this coming and make provisions for it? I would not be surprised if a few days before the Convocation they realise that they can’t make it and it will have to be postponed. Such things have, regrettably, become a part of our psyche. I wonder where else in the world something like this would happen. I am looking forward to some sort of response from someone, anyone.
Yours faithfully,
Concerned 3rd Year
Law Student
(Name and address
supplied)
Editor’s note: Minister of Education Shaik Baksh on Friday announced that classes will resume at UG in the early part of November.
