An­na-Lisa Paul

Stu­dents at­tend­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Open Cam­pus are call­ing on the au­thor­i­ties to con­demn the teach­ing fa­cil­i­ty at St John's Road, St Au­gus­tine and trans­fer class­es per­ma­nent­ly to the head of­fice at Gor­don Street.

They have warned that fail­ure to do so im­me­di­ate­ly will lead to an ex­o­dus of both teach­ers and stu­dents.

Dur­ing a peace­ful protest at the Gor­don Street of­fice last Thurs­day, stu­dents com­plained about the state of dis­re­pair and the di­lap­i­dat­ed con­di­tions which they were sub­ject­ed to dai­ly–some­times forced to hold their class­es on a stair­well due to the lack of air-con­di­tion­ing and fans.

Stu­dent Jeanette Cal­len­der said: "Our par­ents have spent a lot of mon­ey to send us to school here and yet when we come in dai­ly with class­es run­ning from 8 am to 5 pm, there are so many prob­lems we have to face just to con­tin­ue with our ed­u­ca­tion and it is af­fect­ing all of us."

Re­veal­ing that quite a num­ber of lec­tur­ers and stu­dents had al­ready left the cam­pus, Cal­len­der said the ex­o­dus would con­tin­ue if noth­ing was done by the coun­try man­ag­er to ad­dress the sit­u­a­tion.

Among prob­lems list­ed by the four-mem­ber stu­dent com­mit­tee was the lack of prop­er­ly-out­fit­ted class­rooms as many of the cur­rent rooms have ter­mite-in­fest­ed floors, win­dows and black­boards; leak­ing roof; lack of ven­ti­la­tion as on­ly two class­rooms have air-con­di­tion­ers; lack of fans; on­ly two wash­rooms to ser­vice be­tween 150 and 200 stu­dents; bro­ken chairs/desks; no Wi-Fi; a lack of wa­ter and ameni­ties such as toi­let pa­per and soap; and a prop­er cafe­te­ria.

Grant­ed per­mis­sion to protest by prin­ci­pal An­nette Grif­fith-Ack­rill, Cal­len­der was joined by her class­mates Denise Matthews, Car­men Race­do and Faizah Crichlow who all agreed that the stu­dent and teach­ing body could no longer con­tin­ue to op­er­ate in those de­plorable con­di­tions.

The four claimed noth­ing had been done to rec­ti­fy the mat­ter for more than two years, de­spite nu­mer­ous let­ters and re­quests to the rel­e­vant of­fi­cials.

Stand­ing in­side the Gor­don Street cam­pus, Crichlow and Matthews told the large group of stu­dents gath­ered that nu­mer­ous re­quests for class­es to be trans­ferred to the main cam­pus had been re­ject­ed with­out rea­son. Matthews, Crichlow and Cal­len­der said lec­tur­ers at the main cam­pus had con­firmed there were avail­able class­rooms which could be used by the full-time stu­dents but they too, were un­aware of why the stu­dents re­quests had been re­ject­ed.

At­tempts to speak with lec­tur­ers proved fu­tile as many de­clined to speak and di­rect­ed ques­tions to the coun­try man­ag­er Karen Rosemin.

Stu­dents lat­er met with Rosemin who re­port­ed­ly told them she was aware of some of the con­di­tions high­light­ed such as the leak­ing roof, the lack of air-con­di­tion­ing and the rot­ting in­te­ri­or.

The stu­dents claimed Rosemin had promised re­pairs would be ef­fect­ed when school closed dur­ing next va­ca­tion pe­ri­od.

Cal­len­der asked: "If these is­sues were known to you, why was it not done see­ing that a child al­ready fell through the floor­ing last year?"

Dis­ap­point­ed with Rosemin's ex­pla­na­tion, Cal­len­der said they were told all class­rooms had been booked and there was no avail­able space. It is es­ti­mat­ed that par­ents spent up­wards of $10,000 to send stu­dents to school per year.

One stu­dent who did not wish to be iden­ti­fied added: "The con­di­tions are so dis­cour­ag­ing. Some class­rooms are miss­ing the glass panes so when rains, you have to move to a new class. The roof leaks on­to the elec­tri­cal wires and it is a fire haz­ard as some class­es are com­plete­ly closed with no win­dows.

"The en­vi­ron­men­tal and ge­og­ra­phy class­rooms have no lights. The main door to the fe­male bath­room does not lock and there are holes in the floor, so if one goes be­low the school, you can see right in­to the bath­room.

The bath­room win­dows have no cur­tains or tint so when you are out­side, you can see di­rect­ly in as it is in eye's view and we have a lot of men on the cam­pus that do up­keep."

An­oth­er said: "If you want to use the pro­jec­tor, we have to get cre­ative and use garbage bags and tape to put on the win­dows. Uni­forms are nev­er read­i­ly avail­able to the whole in­take of stu­dents and we get in trou­ble for not wear­ing the cor­rect uni­form."

As­sur­ing that the tem­po­rary re­lo­ca­tion of stu­dents while re­pairs were be­ing car­ried out, re­mained a pri­or­i­ty, UWI of­fi­cials said the Open Cam­pus was ex­pect­ing to be able to of­fer first class qual­i­ty with the con­struc­tion of a Cen­tre in Ch­agua­nas.

UWI said the Open Cam­pus Man­age­ment Team was al­so ex­plor­ing al­ter­na­tive ac­com­mo­da­tion for the stu­dents as all class­rooms at Gor­don Street were said to be in full use by both full-time and evening stu­dents.

UWI RE­SPONDS

Ac­knowl­edg­ing on­go­ing main­te­nance is­sues at the pre-uni­ver­si­ty (Sixth-Form) cen­tre at St John's Road, of­fi­cials of UWI Open Cam­pus of­fered an ex­pla­na­tion: "While day-to-day re­pairs by in-house main­te­nance per­son­nel con­tin­ue at the Cen­tre, the site is one of many Open Cam­pus build­ings in­her­it­ed from the ear­li­er en­ti­ties such as the School of Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies and ad­mit­ted­ly en­com­pass­es dat­ed in­fra­struc­ture, re­sult­ing in par­tic­u­lar main­te­nance chal­lenges."

A re­lease from the UWI Mar­ket­ing and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment con­firmed a rou­tine main­te­nance in­spec­tion was con­duct­ed be­fore the be­gin­ning of the 2016/2017 se­mes­ter to iden­ti­fy and rec­ti­fy is­sues.

Con­di­tions were said to have been doc­u­ment­ed and re­port­ed to the Open Cam­pus' Fi­nance Di­vi­sion for ap­proval to pro­ceed with re­pairs. Of­fi­cials said: "Mind­ful of its needs to man­age cash flows to en­sure con­ti­nu­ity in op­er­a­tions, re­fur­bish­ments have been sched­uled to oc­cur over the aca­d­e­m­ic year, in phas­es."