Once in a while, little events occur which suddenly assume greater proportions leading to unanticipated publicity, including the intervention of persons in high positions. In this respect, a controversy blew up in Trinidad & Tobago over the last fortnight that brought the regional University of the West Indies into the limelight in a surely undesired way.
The controversy started with the exposure by a section of the Trinidad press of the resignation of the Programme Director of the Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business under the management of the Trinidad campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI), over the award of a degree to a student in circumstances which the institution’s Programme Director seemed to find unacceptable. That the highly successful Trinidad businessman, Lok Jack, had given his name to the school, was surely intended to give it an added attraction to that which would be conferred merely by its existence under the aegis of the UWI, which over the last few decades has made a decided attempt on all its campuses to enhance business and management education.
What gave the Business School’s decision about the student immediate publicity was that in this case he happened to be the Speaker of the Trinidad & Tobago House of Representatives, Mark Wade, a well-known individual with a respected reputation over many years in that country and in wider Caribbean trade union circles. And the source of dissatisfaction appears to have been that after having completed his course work (the writing of an extended essay on an approved subject as part of the final stages of the examination), he had difficulty, more than once, in passing one written examination.
The school’s solution, on consideration of the student’s explanation for his difficulty, was to substitute an oral examination on the subject matter for the written examination, which Speaker Wade was then recorded as passing. But this solution as indicated above, did not satisfy the Programme Director, who promptly resigned his position.
It is that resignation by the Programme Director that magnified a course of action which the university claimed it has used from time to time and, given the prominence of the student involved, brought the issue to wide public notice and into the realm of controversy. And naturally, the issue pinpointed has been whether the decision taken by the Graduate Business School’s management was in any way influenced by the status of the individual involved.
Further, the issue for the university became one of whether the status of the individual, originally the nominee of the majority party in the House of Representatives to the speakership, had any role in the decision arrived at, even, it appears, in the face of the objection of the school’s official most immediately responsible for overseeing the subject’s work.
It would surely not have been surprising to the university that once the issue came to light, the question of possible political influence on the university, or at a minimum, that of anxiety not to displease the political authorities, would be levelled at the institution. Lower level attempts from within the institution were obviously unsuccessful at quelling concerns, or at least controversy, necessitating the intervention of the Principal of the campus, Professor Clement Sankat and, subsequently, a statement from the university’s highest administrative level, the Vice Chancellor of the university, Professor Nigel Harris.
Harris advised the public that it was the university’s practice that “based on professional and personal circumstances, students can request considerations which will usually be granted once they are consistent with UWI regulations,” the conclusion being that the university’s regulations and past practice fully justified the passing of Speaker-student Wade.
The positive aspect of the controversy is that there was no public government intervention in the matter, an assumption being, no doubt, that in the hothouse of Trinidad & Tobago politics this would aggravate rather than assist the situation of the besieged student-Speaker. Though, of course, the cynics would say that the government would be well aware that any intervention or comment on its part would probably transform the Speaker’s situation into a partisan issue, with the criticism being that what had occurred was a successful attempt to influence the outcome of the matter before it became a public issue.
Nonetheless, in the context of what is a decentralized institution, with the authority of each campus principal being quite extensive, there will be some concern, or at least interest, that its resolution required the heaviest gun of the university – the office of the Vice Chancellor at the Mona, Jamaica, headquarters, to be brought into fire, to support the conclusions of the St Augustine authorities.
There appears reason to ask whether this would have been the case if the student involved was just an ‘ordinary’ individual and not one of high status. And there remains, of course, the fate of the resigned Programme Director, the clear casualty of the imbroglio.
The issue will probably pass relatively unnoticed in much of the Caricom region, given that the UWI has not been fated to be involved in any large controversy between staff and administration and the government authorities, since the Jamaica government’s deportation of Walter Rodney, and the so-called Rodney riots that followed.
Yet, those who, on the various campuses of the university, have followed the event, will perhaps wonder whether what, to some, may have given the appearance of the giving of an inch, might be sending an unwelcome signal in the relations between university and government, that would be disadvantageous in the long term, to the university.
Of course, none of this might be news in Guyana.
