Dear Editor,
I attended my first meeting of the Council of the University of Guyana on Wednesday, August 19, 2015. The meeting had to be aborted because of improper notice. On the agenda was a proposal for the establishment of an Institute of Gender Studies at UG for which the Statutes of the University require approval by the Academic Board. Council learnt later that the matter had not by that time been placed before the Academic Board.
A proper meeting of the Council was held on August 26 at which a substantive presentation was made on the establishment of the Institute. We learnt that the Academic Board had been convened and had approved the proposal on August 25. Asked about a paper or note from Academic Board to help inform Council’s consideration, the only information volunteered was that Council does not receive the minutes of the meetings of the Academic Board!
The establishment of any Institute ‒ as indeed disestablishment, as in the case of the Institute of Develop-ment Studies ‒ is a big development in any university and robust questions need to be asked and answered completely. No one at that meeting was opposed to the idea of such an Institute but there was discomfort at the unsatisfactory answers to many questions posed by former Registrar Mr Vincent Alexander.
This was not helped by the absence from Council’s meeting of Vice Chancellor Jacob Opadeyi who chairs the Academic Board or by the obvious predisposition for the motion of chairperson Ms Bibi Shaddick, Pro-Chancellor, which appears to have affected her conduct of the meeting on that issue.
Fortunately, the concerns were strong and substantial enough to strip the motion of lots of details which will have to be reworked.
The reason for rushing the Council became clear at the just concluded National Conference on Gender and Development Studies. The Institute was announced with much fanfare and there is a photograph of the Vice Chancellor being presented with the Partnership Agreement by Professor Verene Shepherd of UWI, Institute of Developmental Studies, Jamaica. It is reasonable to assume that this agreement was negotiated well before the meeting of Council and one wonders why this information was not disclosed. It also appears that there was more than one foreign visitor invited to the launch.
At least three disturbing conclusions emerge. The first is that the matter was only referred to the Academic Board because of the week’s grace following the aborted meeting. Second, Council was not provided with all the information, and third, there was clear disrespect if not contempt for Council in this matter.
As a new Council member of a troubled institution like the University of Guyana, I at least hope that Council can approach issues without ever having to wonder about the completeness and accuracy of information on which it has to make any decision, or the motives behind them.
Yours faithfully,
Christopher Ram
