” the university stated.“On Monday

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…forces meeting with administrationEarly yesterday morning the University of Guyana’s main gate and the Admissions Division were padlocked by members of the University’s Students’ Society. The students used padlocks on the main gate and bicycle locks on the door to the Vice Chancellor’s office.Attempts by the security to smash the lock on the main gate with a hammer proved futile. In the end the only way left was to remove the gate from the hinges.Students seeking to enter classes were left in the rain to ponder the way forward. Even the Vice Chancellor was forced to seek help by way of people with a large wire cutter to enter his office.The efforts of the Society have attracted the attention of the administration and as a result a meeting with the Student Advisory Board and the UGSS was called yesterday afternoon.At that meeting the concerns of the UGSS were outlined and discussed. A commitment was given by the Administration to take definitive action, the details of which will be conveyed to the UGSS at a planned meeting of the Students’ Advisory Bureau during the course of the coming week.The Executive body of the UGSS will be meeting again today to discuss the matters put forth at the meeting and to decide whether the acts of civil disobedience will continue.Putting aside all of the claims made by both parties however, at the end of the day, the students are still left to deal with a plethora of problems that are and have been a daily part of the life of any University of Guyana student.The largest lecture theatre, the George Walcott Lecture Theatre (GWLT), which is capable of accommodating several hundred students at a time, does not have a properly functioning Public Address System.On Wednesday, one lecturer had to cut short her two-hour class to a mere 45 minutes, simply because she could not sustain the volume of speech necessary to address some 200 students. This is not the only occurrence of large classes being cancelled or cut short as a result of the PA system being out of commission – it happens at least once a week if not more.In a statement issued late yesterday, the university said that the Registrar of the University received a missive from the President of the Students’ Society under the caption “The Untenable Situation on the University’s Campus.” The date of the letter was April 9. In that missive, UGSS President Sherdel Duncan alluded to “several maladies that presently plague the University.”The letter further pre-warned of “acts of civil disobedience.” Some of the matters had been raised in meetings of policy committees of the University (such as the Council and Academic Board) on which there are student representatives.“In those contexts, we have explicitly indicated the framework within which they were being addressed. The Administration and the Registrar, in particular, had not been approached by the Students’ Society on these matters outside those fora,” the university stated.“On Monday, April 12, the Registrar acknowledged receipt of the missive; noted that the matters listed had never been brought to his attention; identified the Students’ Advisory Bureau as the forum where such matters “should be ventilated and solutions sought”; ‘indicated the Administration’s preparedness to dialogue’ and reaffirmed the University’s commitment to “the enhancement of the quality of its service delivery.”Since delivering that response to Mr Duncan personally, the only other communication has been a correspondence captioned: UGSS Actions of Civil Disobedience, in which it is indicated “the Society will be asking the student population to boycott all economic activities on campus,” the university stated.That correspondence sought to give the Security Provider the assurance that “we will seek to engage in our activities in a manner that does not cause damage to person or property.”The university said that Duncan has taken to the media and through those media has expansively voiced issues that were not mentioned in his single missive to the University. “He has also been personally engaged in padlocking major entrances to facilities on the campus.”“In the aforementioned circumstances, the University will continue to do all within its means to deliver quality service to its students. It remains open to dialogue, and has in fact created the environment for dialogue by convening a meeting of the Students’ Advisory Bureau, yesterday.”“The University will not stand idly by and allow a few to disrupt its smooth running as we avail ourselves to the vast majority who are knocking at our doors for services.”