Rhodes Scholar to take legal action against UWI

The 2007 Rhodes scholar, Vincentian Luke Browne, has signaled his intention to take legal action against the University of the West Indies.{{more}}

Browne, who completed his three-year degree in Economics and Mathematics at the Cave Hill Campus of the University this past May, has retained a legal team headed by Queen’s Counsel Parnell Campbell, and will challenge the fact that he has been awarded his degree with Upper Second Class Honours instead of the First Class honours he expected.

Browne said he is illegitimately being deprived the class of degree he deserves and is defending his academic record from being unfairly tarnished.

“I have no degree from the University, and I do not intend to accept a degree that says anything else (than first class)”.

Browne is complaining about four specific matters which he said affected the grades he received in four courses. Had he been spared any one of the four episodes, he said, “things would have been different”.

To be awarded a degree with first class honours, one must have a minimum Grade Point Average (GPA) of 3.60. Browne’s GPA stands at 3.56.

In one course, he said the exam was set on material that was not taught, was not in the recommended text and did not appear on any past examination paper; in another, the questions made “impossible demands based on the time allowed”; in the third case, “there was subjective and injudicious marking”, which resulted in his receiving “just about zero” for one question, and in the fourth case, according to Browne, exam regulations were breached when he and his classmates were given less than one week’s notice of an assignment’s due date, and not the minimum two weeks stipulated by the University regulations. Four very serious acts, he asserts, all of which he claims, “compromise the integrity of the processes of examination at the University of the West Indies”.

The twenty-two year-old told Searchlight that he made formal complaints about his situation during the first week of June to several university officials including the Dean of the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences and the Office of the Principal (Cave Hill). To date, he said, there has been no response to his complaints, a situation that makes him uneasy.

“I believe there is also a coordinated effort to exclude me from First Class Honours, including through the lack of timely response to my formal complaints. Their transparent strategy of delay is employed to weaken my resolve.”

The young man is especially aggrieved because despite his queries, his name has been published on the Pass List of the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences, an act Browne describes as “a deliberate effort to frustrate the process of resolution… a dastardly act of sabotage perpetrated by the University of the West Indies.”

Browne views such a posting as premature and an attempt to embarrass him.

Browne, a 2004 St. Vincent and the Grenadines National Scholar, passed all of the four disputed courses with grades ranging from an A- to C, but says he is not a C student or even a B student, and presented his overall grades as evidence.

Over his three years at UWI, except for the four disputed courses, he received nine A+, ten A, one A- and three B+ grades.

The young scholar feels that he is being victimized because of the unfavourable attention he brought to the University when he organized protest action in 2006 against the mistreatment of students on minivans, as well as his “public denunciation of discriminatory selection practices with respect to the Combined Campuses and Colleges (CCC) cricket team in 2008”.

Browne said his actions now ensure “the safe and peaceful travel of students, and have allowed for fair selection and assessment”. He is expressing the hope that his efforts will result in the same kind of benefits for him.

Stating that his “trust holds no longer”, he said he has received reports that some lecturers stated their resolve to “clip his wings” as he was “flying too high”. Other evidence of “grudge” he said, is that his Rhodes scholarship went unrecognized in all the campus’s publications.

He views the situation as one that is bigger than Luke Browne, as he hopes to “provide a road by which any student may access justice.” He told Searchlight that he has heard of many stories similar to his and his action is what may allow those situations to come to a satisfactory resolution.

The former Guild of Undergraduates President said he has the full support of the Guild which he said has already collected over 1000 signatures on a petition to demand that the University brings resolution to this and other matters affecting students’ graduation.

However, Professor Hilary Beckles, Principal of the Cave Hill Campus told Searchlight that the university has looked into Browne’s complaints and has found no evidence whatsoever to support his allegations.

He said the University has not yet responded because “We normally handle these things very carefully and very skillfully, as we recognize it is a sensitive matter”.

“Sometimes, the way in which allegations are made, legal consequences can be interpreted. When legal consequences can be interpreted, the matter is referred to the University’s attorneys,” the principal said.

He added that the situation is “nothing that we are overly concerned about because we have put a mechanism in place to guide it (the review process)”.

Professor Beckles stressed that the University is very proud of the former Guild president and the fact that he got a Rhodes scholarship coming from the Cave Hill Campus. “We are also proud of the fact that his entire family are Cave Hill graduates, and all these things we celebrate.”

The young man, who is the son of Theodore and Laura Browne of Cane Garden said that plans are still on stream for him to travel to Oxford University in October to commence his studies leading to the degree of Master of Philosophy in Development Studies.

Receiving an upper second class honours degree does not affect his award from the Rhodes Trust, not does it affect his entry into Oxford.