Former university librarian Yvonne Stephenson has described the late Kathleen Drayton as “a strong advocate for women’s rights” and a “very serious academic”, who made her presence felt on the campus. Stephenson said that Drayton was a member of staff when the University was housed in the Queen’s College compound and was there when it was eventually relocated to the Turkeyen campus.
Stephenson said that she was “a dominant character on the campus”, who “was very forceful and outspoken.” Drayton was one of the early members of that Woman’s Studies Group on the campus, an academic oriented group made up of both academic staff and students. Stephenson said.
According to Stephenson, as a senior staff member within the faculty of Education, Drayton also shaped a number of the academic programmes within that faculty.
Dean of the School of Education and Humanities Al Creighton said that Drayton along with her husband Harold, came to Guyana in the 1960s to help establish the local university upon the encouragement of Dr Cheddi Jagan. The university was established in 1963.
According to Creighton, Harold Drayton later became the University’s first Deputy Vice Chancellor. Creighton said that Kathleen worked assiduously as a Lecturer in Education. He said that the former Education Lecturer was a strong political activist not only in Guyana but while she was a student at the UWI Campus in Jamaica.
Kathleen Drayton died on Monday at her St Michael, Barbados home at about 2:30 am. She was the President of the Barbados Association of Retired Persons (BARP). She left Guyana in 1973 to take up a post at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI). She served as the former head of Women and Development Studies at UWI. Drayton eventually retired as a senior lecturer in the Department of Education after serving as a member of staff for a number of years.
