Michelle Loubon

St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus prin­ci­pal Prof Clement Sankat says a pro­pos­al to as­sist 75 dis­placed Hait­ian stu­dents at ter­tiary lev­el has been sub­mit­ted.

He made this com­ment dur­ing a con­fer­ence host­ed by the As­so­ci­a­tion of Uni­ver­si­ties and Re­search In­sti­tutes of the Caribbean (UNI­CA) at the In­sti­tute of Crit­i­cal Think­ing, UWI, yes­ter­day. Its theme was Part­ner­ing For Sus­tain­abil­i­ty: The Ur­gency of Haiti, and comes on the heels of the de­struc­tion un­leashed by the earth­quake of Jan­u­ary 12. Sankat said: "We have tak­en a pro­pos­al for 75 stu­dents. We have not worked out all the costs in­volved yet, but it is go­ing to be a lot. I will have to get back to you on the ex­act fig­ure." To date, Prof Matthew Smith, from the De­part­ment of His­to­ry at the Mona Cam­pus in Ja­maica, said they had tak­en in 100 Hait­ian stu­dents. Oth­er key speak­ers, like Prof Nigel Har­ris, UWI vice-chan­cel­lor and Nivia Fer­nan­dez-Her­nan­dez, vice pres­i­dent of UNI­CA and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Puer­to Ri­co, al­so shared the view that it was manda­to­ry to reach out to Hait­ian stu­dents. In his fea­ture ad­dress, Sankat said it was im­per­a­tive to reach out to Haiti, since "we must cap­i­talise on the po­ten­tial of such a con­cen­tra­tion of hu­man cap­i­tal to ad­vance the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion.

"By tak­ing con­crete ac­tion in ad­vanc­ing UNI­CA's ob­jec­tive to sup­port the re­gion­al­i­sa­tion of high­er ed­u­ca­tion, we will en­sure our ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions, both in­di­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly, re­main at the fore­front of learn­ing and re­search." Fer­nan­dez-Her­nan­dez said: "Part­ner­ing and a call to ac­tion is our pro­pos­al and com­mit­ment to con­tribute to a ma­jor re­cov­ery and re­con­struc­tion ef­fort with an em­pha­sis in the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor in the medi­um and long term. "We all stand ready to be a part­ner in Haiti in de­vel­op­ing new ini­tia­tives to strength­en their in­sti­tu­tions of learn­ing. We all of­fer sol­i­dar­i­ty, co-op­er­a­tion and good­will." Prof Nor­van Gir­van, of UWI's In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, said: "The fate of Haiti is ours." He re­mind­ed the aca­d­e­mics that it was im­per­a­tive to act in Haiti's in­ter­est on be­half of the great lib­er­a­tor, Tou­s­saint L'Ou­ver­ture, and the late Caribbean icon, Prof Rex Net­tle­ford. "We have to look at the de­struc­tion of the build­ings, con­struc­tion of uni­ver­si­ties, pay­ment of salaries to full-time and part-time lec­tur­ers and schol­ar­ships for stu­dents who can­not af­ford fees," said Gir­van.

Grim sit­u­a­tion

Among those present was Dr Jo­ce­lyne Trouil­lot, rec­tor, Uni­ver­site Caraibe, Haiti, who paint­ed a grim pic­ture of the plight of dis­placed Hait­ian stu­dents at pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary lev­els. Via the help of an in­ter­preter, she said there was "90 per cent de­struc­tion in Port-au-Prince. "Four uni­ver­si­ties were dam­aged. Main build­ings were de­stroyed. We still have not re­cov­ered bod­ies. Stu­dents are trapped un­der the rub­ble. "Hun­dreds of stu­dents lost; four pro­fes­sors dead. Rub­ble is still to be re­moved. About 80 per cent of the build­ings for ed­u­ca­tion in Port-au-Prince have been de­stroyed." Like Hait­ian arts stu­dent Merci­er Guil­er Ju­nior, she felt there was a lot of work to be done. "We need to bring to­geth­er all stu­dents. We have to or­gan­ise and mo­bilise the stu­dents. We need to build tem­po­rary struc­tures. "We need to start re-es­tab­lish­ing the uni­ver­si­ties. We need to pro­vide psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port for the stu­dents," added Trouil­lot.