Unstudious protest

HERE IS a list of some of the travails endured in recent weeks by students of the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies due to protest action by unionised staff: final exam papers have not been signed and submitted, coursework grades have not been uploaded, office hours have not been observed, remedial classes have been put on hold, teaching, tutorials and lab sessions have been placed up in the air, and further exams have been postponed.

All of this, through no fault of the largely young student populace.

The grouse of the West Indies Group of University Teachers (WIGUT), the union at the forefront of these developments, is that the process of wage negotiation is taking too long. In March, UWI said it was awaiting word on remits and disclosed discussions with the Chief Personnel Officer (CPO) were ongoing.

Universities are generally places of forward thinking. Yet, the strategies adopted by the union in relation to this matter appear to be straight out of an industrial relations playbook as old as time.

“It is abundantly obvious that the union is using the student body for their own political gain,” said former student guild president Kobe Sandy this week, lamenting that students had effectively become “a pawn for what is clearly a matter between…the administration and the Government.”

No one gainsays the drudgery of university life for staff members. The normal stresses associated with their roles were heightened over the pandemic when many were forced to adjust modes of operation in a way that only exacerbated the likelihood of stress and burnout.

But WIGUT – whose president Dr Indira Rampersad is an expert in international relations – cannot bury its head in the sand and ignore the fact that it is operating in a far wider context than the university alone. Unless it has been operating under a rock, it must know virtually everyone in TT is concerned about the pace of operations of the CPO’s office.

And just as staff had to endure much during the pandemic, so too did students.

Many were already reeling from cuts in official subsidies to their education when the way education itself was delivered was forced to change and when the relevance of their degrees was brought into question by a novel coronavirus that has since reshaped the world and upended global economies.

It is little wonder student enrolment is down.

It is unacceptable that any worker should have to wait for long periods in order to receive their entitlements. However, treating students like mere collateral damage will only serve to dissuade young people from turning to tertiary education at this moment.

With critical government contributions to UWI on a downward trajectory, the union may simply be making a bad situation worse.