Rough ride at the Cave Hill Campus

by Luke Brown 22.AUG.08

Introduction

I have long thought about recording the experiences of students at the University of the West Indies (UWI), as fate has allowed me to see them and to understand them, without knowing precisely when or how. The current circumstances have answered these questions so that while you may anticipate a more permanent record, the newspaper allows me to share stories that Vincentians must long remember.{{more}} The page on which these words are printed may later be used to wrap and preserve the fragile, or it may be discarded and burnt; but, hopefully, the words you read now serve to expose a system that we must both break and re-make, and prevent that system from discarding student concerns and attempting to burn the student that rises up in protest.

Now that the UWI celebrates its 60th anniversary we would sometimes ask: 60 years of what? The answer is found in the stories of the alumni. Of course, there are fond memories – finding regional friends, finding a spouse, the freedom to roam, experiences on the beaches, on the halls, and on the playing fields. Then there are recollections of a different kind – the academic experience, the lecturers, the UWI general staff, the cost of living, and the victimization. The experience combines fun and torture such that we maintain the personal friendships, while we are no friends of the system.

The Struggle

Recently, my efforts against the system have been made public. You see that I am caught up in a titanic struggle, a struggle that threatens to consume me if I fight alone and on my own behalf. From the reactions, Vincentians fight with me; and from the beginning it has been clear that this effort is as much mine as it is yours. It is the struggle of all those who have been to the University, those who are at the University now, and those who may one day enter its doors. Since the effort also incorporates parents and well wishers, this effort is national, even regional.

So I dedicate my efforts to you; to you who would give more and more, yet realize that your grades remain the same, or that they were getting worse; to you who suffered by the arbitrary decisions of lecturers; to you who were silenced because you were too vocal; to you who, when in the middle of your torment, felt powerless to do anything.

In you I find me. Elements of the case I bring against the UWI have already been presented. The aspects highlighted speak to the violation of the student’s right to be fairly examined, the contravention of the principles of natural justice, and breaches in regulations. The case is already clear on account of these, and becomes more transparent when the weird details are added. Such details include threatening remarks and declarations that a lecturer would grade according to who he knows.

Principal’s Response

In the public domain, the Cave Hill Campus Principal offered some response to the issues raised. The principal has supplied-up to now-no response to the student who presented the facts several months ago, but was able to respond to the media at a moment’s notice. So you already see contrast; there is also contradiction and hypocrisy.

It is strange that the principal would declare pride in this former Guild President when, while on Campus, there were all manner of conspiracies against me. For all my activism and discipline, attempts (though unsuccessful) were made to bring me before the disciplinary committee. The charge was “conduct considered by the principal… as unbecoming of the status of a student of the University.” How proud must this principal be!

Consider also that no publication on Campus acknowledged the Rhodes Scholarship, while these publications spread mediocrity through the region. According to this philosophy, the worst offenders must be free, while the disciplined be caged; mediocrity must be exalted, and academic excellence suppressed.

Beckles says that their “very careful and very skillful” handling of a sensitive matter has prevented a response to my charges. True to form, contradictions follow when he says that the Campus is not overly concerned with the matter of a student. Right thinking people, and legal minds, believe that Beckles lost credibility when he says that there is no evidence whatsoever to support the allegations. Indeed, the case is clear and strong. The evidence is most compelling and uncontroverted. Has he lost his way?

These are the contrasts, these are the contradictions, and this is the hypocrisy that Hilary Beckles represents.

We are Shortchanged

I sat in a meeting chaired by the Vice Chancellor which informed of a mandate by regional governments: that the University diversify its sources of income.

By the figures, it seemed as if to diversify meant to tax students more.

This year Cave Hill students face a near 20% hike in tuition fees, and the economic cost has also experienced a sharp rise. The cost of books, rent, food and transport-the cost of living-is also excessive.

Sitting in meetings allows you to understand how unfair and unjust the system is; it gives you an elevated vantage point from which you could survey a 21st century plantation. The slaves must revolt.

Among the things I heard from Hilary Beckles was that the cost of educating each student was falling; yet the Campus moved to increase tuition fees. In a prior meeting the University Bursar announced-with no statement on the budgetary implications-increased travel benefits for University Officers. Can’t we rationalise why these fees are always rising?

The “Distance” students-those who complete their programme locally-are also asked to pay more; even when contact hours are reduced and the programme moves to an online delivery. Why the rise? There are fewer contact hours, there is less administrative cost; but, for students, more frustrations and more expense.

We create a comfortable living for others, while at the brink of survival; we are slaves. The children of St. Vincent and the Grenadines must not pay what they cannot afford. We must not pay what we are told; and take whatever they hand us. Really, why must the economically disadvantaged be charged for the luxuries of others? Why must our fees sustain a poorly administered system? Why must we be shortchanged?

If I am Rhodes Scholar I Must

As Guild President-and as student in general-I saw myself as the defender of a disadvantaged people; I maintain this view. Two (2) standards specified for judging Rhodes Scholarship applicants are:

• Truth, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship

And

• Moral force of character and instincts to lead, and to take an interest in one’s fellow beings

I want to be true to these standards. To be true is to prevent the University of the West Indies from disrespecting the honest efforts of students, even my own efforts. We must be genuine without a fear of the consequences; so devoted must we be that the weak find protection by our strength, our kindness and our unselfishness, so that ultimately no one is weak. By instinct we must never retreat from responsibility; we must be prepared to lead in even the darkest times.

Ask John Bunyan, ask John Milton, ask Nelson Mandela, ask Fidel Castro, ask Andrew Cummings Q.C., and they would tell you that they agree with Sidney N. Bremer when he says that “No tyranny of circumstances can permanently imprison a determined will.”

To Resist is To Be West Indian

CLR James-no product of a stifling university system-asserted with conviction that “West Indians first became aware of themselves as a people in the Haitian Revolution,” and Silvio Torres-Saillant reminds us that James saw the 1959 Cuban Revolution as an offspring of that foundational liberating saga of the slaves in Haiti. So, too, did James define Toussaint L’Ouverture as the first and greatest of West Indians.

From James, we have the suggestion that to resist is to be West Indian; Chatoyer-the Vincentian-fits into this mold. Let us be West Indians. Let us be Vincentians. By doing so we may secure the fate of a Toussaint L’Ouverture, or a Joseph Chatoyer, or a Walter Rodney; but we would also be a tribute to the region. Let it be Lord: if I have to fall in the process, let me fall; if dreams of life extended are not meant to be, let the dreams die. Someday, this war would be won.

Some interpret it as a war against the embodiment of white neighborhoods and white schools by black West Indian students. Some, perhaps of a different perspective, say that only a black man would conspire to tear down his black brother before sending him to the white world.

Those who have crossed this Hilly Terrain-the Cave Hill landscape as fashioned by successive principals-must be resolved to level the land for those to follow. It may be appropriate that the trip ends on these terms. Where I have done well academically, this experience must say that I am not beyond human struggles and the struggles of students fighting to make the grade. Therefore, my story is no fairytale that human reality prevents anyone from relating to. It isn’t even my story – it is the story of regional students. The resistance must continue even as the story is being told.