Hillan More­an

Let­ter sent to Prof Clement Sankat, prin­ci­pal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine:

Stu­dents have been and are be­ing ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by the protest ac­tion of the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) at UWI, which con­tin­ued anew on Mon­day, Tues­day, and Wednes­day and was gain­ing in fe­roc­i­ty yes­ter­day.

Ear­li­er this week, mem­bers of the OW­TU shout­ed their de­mands around ex­am build­ings in au­di­ble prox­im­i­ty to the stu­dents dur­ing ex­am times, as well as bang­ing on the walls of their ex­am rooms. They al­so drummed and blew horns which have se­vere­ly af­fect­ed ex­am­i­na­tions on the two ear­li­est days. These mem­bers knew the sites and times of the ex­ams, and used this in­for­ma­tion to strength­en their protest. We ac­knowl­edge that work­ers have the right to make their de­mands and protest in a peace­ful man­ner, but the ac­tion which ap­pears to be tak­en against the stu­dent body is un­nec­es­sary, un­eth- ical and cru­el. The stu­dents of the UWI are not the ones they are protest­ing against but rather hostages in a sit­u­a­tion which is be­yond our con­trol.

We are no longer in a po­si­tion to take pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures for the dis­rup­tion that oc­curred on Mon­day and Tues­day. Stu­dents have com­plained that they were not able to con­cen­trate dur­ing the ex­ams and, most dis­tress­ing­ly, some stu­dents suf­fered from emo­tion­al dis­tress strong enough to lead them to leave the ex­am rooms in an ef­fort to main­tain san­i­ty. The pro­test­ers move back and forth, mean­ing that when­ev­er peace re­turned and at­tempts were made to con­cen­trate, this made the ex­pe­ri­ence more de­bil­i­ta­tive. Please con­sid­er this there­fore as an of­fi­cial re­quest on be­half of the stu­dent body to the prin­ci­pal as the chair of the Aca­d­e­m­ic Board at UWI, St Au­gus­tine and ad­di­tion­al­ly the se­nior as­sis­tant reg­is­trar of ex­ams, Jessie Ann George, for con­sid­er­a­tion to be tak­en on the im­pact of these afore­men­tioned ac­tions against the stu­dent body, and there­fore put mea­sures in place to com­pen­sate stu­dents for any aca­d­e­m­ic de­pres­sion they had in the writ­ing of their ex­ams.

It would be cal­lous and un­just to grade the pa­pers of the stu­dents as if they had been writ­ten in the en­vi­ron­ment that the uni­ver­si­ty has agreed to sup­ply. Please re­fer to the fol­low­ing:"You have a right to the re­sources nec­es­sary for the at­tain­ment of your learn­ing ob­jec­tives, in­clud­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, time­ly, ac­cu­rate and re­li­able in­for­ma­tion on all aca­d­e­m­ic mat­ters af­fect­ing stu­dents; to ac­cess in­for­ma­tion on cam­pus ser­vices and fa­cil­i­ties with­out un­due dif­fi­cul­ty; to ad­e­quate in­struc­tion; to ex­press opin­ion on the per­for­mance of lec­tur­ers and the qual­i­ty of teach­ing; to re­ceive ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion about ex­am­i­na­tion pro­ce­dures; to be fair­ly ex­am­ined; to re­ceive time­ly ex­am­i­na­tion re­view and re­sults; and to re­ceive as far as is prac­ti­ca­ble ex­pla­na­tions of rea­sons for fail­ure in or­der to be able to plan and ac­com­plish your ed­u­ca­tion­al and ca­reer ob­jec­tives" (UWI, The Code of Prin­ci­ples and Re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for Stu­dents, p. 3).

It is al­so nec­es­sary to add that we are avail­able for an im­me­di­ate meet­ing, to come to an agree­ment as to how the stu­dents will be grad­ed so that they can be in­formed. Such com­pen­sa­tion would al­so ap­ply to any fur­ther ex­am­i­na­tions that may be dis­turbed. I have not­ed, with some dis­ap­point­ment, the lim­i­ta­tions that the cam­pus se­cu­ri­ty and na­tion­al po­lice have stat­ed, but these will be ad­dressed lat­er. We call on the uni­ver­si­ty ad­min­is­tra­tion to be forth­right on this mat­ter for the main­te­nance and re­build­ing of peace­ful re­la­tion­ships be­tween all staff and the stu­dents of this uni­ver­si­ty. With re­gard to present and fu­ture protests of this mag­ni­tude, we must for­mal­ly re­quest that the ac­tion takes place in an area that will nei­ther af­fect learn­ing nor ex­ams. We are aware that these work­ers are em­ployed by the uni­ver­si­ty and there is an in­ter­nal as­pect and val­ue to this en­tire situ- ation.

Thus, we sug­gest an in­ter­nal law for the uni­ver­si­ty which can pro­tect non-protest­ing mem­bers of staff and stu­dents which nei­ther in­fringes on the rights of those who are protest­ing nor those who are not protest­ing at any par­tic­u­lar time. We have con­tact­ed the branch pres­i­dent and hope to dis­cuss the lim­it­ing of the im­pact of their ac­tion on ex­ams and to ex­press sol­i­dar­i­ty with their cause. As I have stat­ed be­fore, we un­der­stand and sym­pa­thise with their cause, but ob­ject to these means and meth­ods.

We look for­ward to your earnest and most ur­gent re­sponse.

Hillan More­an

Guild pres­i­dent

UWI, St Au­gus­tine