SURELY STUDENTS at the University of Technology can find a better way to show their displeasure with the administration than to block the gates as they did yesterday, denying access and exit to people having legitimate business at the St. Andrew campus.
The blocking of gates by students has become all too common a feature, and a very bad one at that, demonstrating an inability to find better ways to pressure specific administrations to address students' concerns.
At the centre of yesterday's protest is the delay by the UTech administration in presenting students with grades from exams sat last December. The administration has admitted to failing to meet its deadline of implementing an Integrated Students Administrative system, which would allow students to get their grades online. By resorting to the old method of printing out the reports, the presentation of the grades has been further delayed.
The students' fears are hinged on the impact the delay will have on their ability to access scholarships, do re-sits and obtain loans from the Students' Loan Bureau, if necessary. These are legitimate concerns and the university's administration can rightly be severely criticised for its communications snafu. Once they realised there would be more problems in meeting the deadline, and knowing of the previously expressed concerns, the administration should have been more pro-active in alerting the students and attempting to defuse the tension.
It is even arguable that the students are correct that it should not have to take nearly three months to have results ready. But the answer is not to inconvenience everybody else.
While civil disobedience is a time-honoured practice all over the world, in far in too many instances, persons who have localised grievances believe that its their right to prevent others from going about their business. We hardly expect students at the tertiary level to ape rabble-rousing behaviour that hardly accomplishes anything. Often the very act of civil unrest only pushes back further, the processes already begun to address the concerns.
We trust that the UTech administration will learn the appropriate lessons and the need to keep the avenues of communication open and that the students will seek creative means of circumventing some of the obstacles they see in relation to their plans for graduation and loans. One of the lessons they should learn is that the journey to their intended destination is not always smooth. People have to learn how to circumvent obstacles without creating more.
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