Stu­dents and ad­min­is­tra­tors at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean (USC) are look­ing for al­ter­na­tive venues as their grad­u­a­tion day draws near. Last Thurs­day the au­di­to­ri­um was de­stroyed by a fire that be­gan at the uni­ver­si­ty's cam­pus on the Mara­cas Roy­al Road, Mara­cas/St Joseph. Fire of­fi­cials be­lieved it was caused by an elec­tri­cal mal­func­tion. Up to late yes­ter­day, Fire Pre­ven­tion of­fi­cers were con­tin­u­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the cause of the blaze and the es­ti­mate of the dam­age.

In a re­lease, the uni­ver­si­ty said no one was in­jured be­cause stu­dents had left the com­pound as it was the last day of ex­ams. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, stu­dents said they were seek­ing al­ter­na­tives for the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies, which are sched­uled be­tween May 11 and May 13. Dur­ing the past few years, grad­u­a­tion was sched­uled on­ly once off-cam­pus, at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya, but was due to re­turn to cam­pus this year.