Dear Editor,
How uncomfortable a place the University of Guyana must be now for students. Mr Bollers complains about the university team not getting to attend some athletic championship somewhere. In the in the nineties the University of Guyana Students Society (UGSS) did not complain, it took action. When the sports’ organiser did not make it possible for us to have our annual athletics championships we had him removed and we ran our annual athletics championships ourselves. We sent a team to the World Student Games in Buffalo Texas, attended a World Student Peace Summit in Kyoto Japan, and several CUSA games.
We reintroduced basketball to the university campus because there were some backboards rotting aback of Technology. We held Friday afternoon games on the tarmac. We played football and volleyball and were trying with badminton and table tennis.
When they decided to unconstitutionally embark on charging fees we did not complain, we took both the University Council and the Government of Guyana to court. When the toilets stank and when the administration stank with it and a lecturer scrapped a student’s assignment, we locked the university down. We lobbied for and got leave of absence from academic responsibilities for both faculty representatives and the student President. We got a stipend for the student President. We transformed the rooms adjacent to the UGSS office into meeting places for the Islamic and Christian communities. The last time I was on campus the Hindus now have a space there. When vegetarians could not get vegetarian meals on campus we provided these from our own canteen in the students’ common room, and when the administration came and seized the meals we were selling there for the benefit of vegetarians we raised hell. We won the right to have the final say in who ran the canteen. When Vice-Chancellor Dennis Craig wanted to impose the university’s auditor upon us as the auditor of our accounts, we let him know that the UGSS constitution said that the Chief Accountant was the UGSS’s auditor and presented the accounts to him to be audited by him. We asked no quarter and gave none. The library was in the habit of putting students out to close at 5 when it should close at 9; we refused to move and sat till 9.
We institutionalised the presidential debates for the candidate seeking to become Student President and presented presidential candidates for national elections to the university community. We forced the establishment of the Students Advisory Bureau, a joint committee of the student government and the university administration established to garner our ideas for the government of student life and the university. We abandoned it when we saw that the administration was not serious about it. We were not liked by many but we were respected and did what we took the oath of office to do: “To do our duty without fear or favour.” We were locked up and Gerhard Ramsaroop had the webbing of his hand split by a police baton. All of this we did with a paltry $100,000 of student dues which the administration grudgingly gave to us. The rest we raised. I was reminded by a young lady, “when I came on campus that is the year you relinquish student president to a female.” The UGSS is a student governing body and should act as such. We showed respect and demanded respect in return. We let the student views be known at every level within and without the university. We acted responsibly. That’s how it was in the ’90s in the Lindon Harry-Sharon Douglas era. That’s how student governments should behave. Even the ’90s seemed to be a far cry from an earlier time. Dr Mark Kirton once said, “things are looking up.” Oh what a pathetic place the university must be for students now. The UGSS must be fast asleep.
Yours faithfully,
Jonathan Adams
Former UGSS President