UG in a mess! Whose fault is it?

Dear Editor,

Too often, the PPP government is blamed for the current decline (a mess, really), that is a feature of the country’s premiere educational institution – the University of Guyana. In fact, in ‘Kissoonian’ parlance, Mr Jagdeo is guilty of ‘micromanaging.’ Now it seems as though that very accusation, if true, would have been UG’s saviour. Please take a look at these academic crimes.

Grades for semester one courses have not been made official and, of course, cannot be issued to the now perturbed students. These students are in the latter stages of their second semester and still they do not know their first semester status. Suppose a ‘failed grade’ would have changed their academic direction, what would they now resort to? It stands to reason that no student should move over to a new block of work, unless and until their examination results are known. The whole thing is ludicrous. But it is even worse than that.

Students registered in certain 2010-2011 first semester courses are still attending classes for these courses. These courses all started late, and the reason is that the assigned lecturers just did not see it appropriate to act ethically, academically and professionally in accordance with the statutes and expectations of the university. This really needed some kind of ‘micro-managing.’ Don’t you think so? One hopes this chronic nonsense comes to an immediate cessation.

Another mind-boggling issue is that of the milieu of the Turkeyen campus. It seems as though this is just another hang-out joint. Students parade with their cell phones, talking loudly. If it is not the talking, it is the listening to music from these modern cell phones or their lap tops. This, too, is an established practice. One can now add to this the noise nuisance from the hire cars traversing the main entrance. There is no silent zone at UG, and classes adjacent to this road are always obnoxiously interrupted by these cars. In fact, some visitors and private taxis have picked up on this, and so they have stretched it even further: they use their sophisticated stereo system to make sure that all on campus are entertained. What a generation of scholars is forthcoming!

Instead of nit-picking, the Freddies of Guyana and other maligners should highlight these problems and lay these gaffes at their appropriate feet.

Finally, here are some suggestions, and these can be so readily implemented. Since the minibuses have their point of boarding and disembarking, should not this rule apply to the hire cars? Also, will it be so terribly wrong to declare the campus a silent zone? The cell phone crisis is of such that even the library is now characterised by the ‘student-cell phone inseparability. It is a shame, and one hopes that, since the UG administration as a whole seems incapable of correcting their own misdemeanours, they would let the Jagdeo-led PPP ‘micromanage’ the University of Guyana.

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