The most recent missive from the University of Guyana Students Society (UGSS) President, Mr Joshua Griffith, to the university administration about the physical conditions on the campus is familiar in both its tone and its content. It seeks to be assertive and unambiguous about the wholly unacceptable conditions at UG whilst avoiding the overtones of menace and militancy that have become an integral part of student movements around the world.
It would seem from the content of the UGSS President’s letter that the situation at Turkeyen is probably close to as bad as it can be. He refers to UG being “unable to provide at minimum basic fundamental services that are to be expected from a tertiary level institution” and as far as specificity is concerned the letter alludes to the need for “improved classroom furniture, laboratory facilities, library facilities, sports facilities and health facilities,” creating a nexus between the facilities fee” in place at UG and “promised investments” in the light of the institution of those fees, some of the implementation dates for which, Mr Griffith claims, have now “expired without any communication from the university’s administration.” This last remark, particularly, is indicative of a suggestion on Mr Griffith’s part that the university administration might not be negotiating with the UGSS in the best of faith, a matter on which the university may wish to make a comment.
On the whole the letter reflects what has, up until now, been Mr Griffith’s negotiating style of seeking to send a message about his and his administration’s stamina and persistence in engaging the university administration in an effort to right the prevailing wrongs, though it has to be said that he does not create the impression of being a frothing-at-the-mouth firebrand. Indeed, while his most recent letter to Vice Chancellor Opadeyi alludes to the option of unspecified student action, it makes no particular threat and certainly does not create the impression that –at least in the short term – Mr Griffith and his fellow students will be beating down the doors of the university’s administrative offices seeking to create chaos.
The truth is that Mr Griffith, who comes across as a contemplative young man, is really not playing with the strongest of hands at this time. Years of having to endure physical conditions at the university that have simply grown from bad to worse would appear to have diminished the appetite of the student body as a whole for a ‘fight,’ and there are those who argue that given the frustrating experiences of their predecessors and all of the distractions associated with their substantive pursuit of successfully completing their respective courses of studies, many (maybe even most) of the students have simply taken the position that the best course of action is to get in and out of the university as quickly as possible whilst avoiding any intellectual engagement with its problems.
Over the years that UG has been in crisis there has never really been any single, determined effort to turn the situation around through a meaningful financial investment that sets aside the red herring of affordability, and acknowledges that, in fact, we cannot afford not to have a university the standards of which match the best in the region if not the world. At this particular stage of our development and in circumstances where both the public and private sectors concede that a dearth of skills is one of the biggest obstacles to development, significantly enhancing the learning environment at UG ought surely to be at the very top of the list of national priorities. Over time, that goal has been supplanted by periodic bouts of jousting between the country’s foremost political combatants over an enfeebled institution which, to this country’s eternal shame, is really not taken seriously in global academic circles.
And as far as putting real money into the rehabilitation of UG is concerned, we perhaps need to remind ourselves of the haemorrhaging of public funds through corrupt practices and the various other amounts that have been spent on pursuits that pale into insignificance when compared with a university that offers a high standard of education delivery.
The current UGSS executive has inherited an administration/student relationship in which students have, for the most part, had to endure a generally sub-standard working environment without any meaningful corrective action ever having been taken over the years. What this appears to have brought about is an assumption on the part of the UG administration and the Government of Guyana that one generation of students after another will be quite prepared to endure the charade of negotiations for a meaningful and comprehensive change in conditions at UG when the reality is that they are simply having to grin and bear the extant conditions.
There is in Mr Griffith’s recent letter a suggestion that the university administration continues to pursue a familiar line of giving undertakings within the framework of a less than earnest negotiating environment, while persistently neglecting to keep its word.
Mr Griffith’s election to the presidency of the UGSS coincides with the recent increase in student fees and his communication with the Vice Chancellor also points to an apparent expectation that with higher fees will come better conditions. Indeed, having himself been involved in discourses on the fees’ hike in his capacity of acting UGSS President earlier this year, he may well now feel under a measure of pressure to secure some level of improvement in the conditions at UG.
From where we stand it appears that Mr Griffith is trying to walk a line between moderation and militancy whilst seeking to take with him a student body whose disposition to the conditions that they endure at UG may well range from indifference to indignation. That leaves him with an ambivalent constituency, a UG administration that has become seasoned in its particular approach to negotiating with the students and – for now at least – not a particularly robust negotiating position. That has to change.
