Ky­ron Reg­is

ky­ron.reg­is@guardian.co.tt

The se­nior ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) have com­mit­ted a por­tion of their month­ly in­come to as­sist stu­dents that are see­ing hard times in the midst of COVID-19.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, UWI not­ed: “The Vice-Chan­cel­lor, Cam­pus Prin­ci­pals, Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lors, Uni­ver­si­ty Bur­sar and Uni­ver­si­ty Reg­is­trar—have all com­mit­ted to al­lo­cat­ing a per­cent­age of their salaries for the next three months to­wards a stu­dent hard­ship fund.”

The in­sti­tu­tion ac­knowl­edged that the aim of the fund is to pro­mote eq­ui­ty of ac­cess for all stu­dents as well as pro­vide much need­ed ad­di­tion­al coun­selling ser­vices dur­ing this time.

UWI Vice-Chan­cel­lor, Pro­fes­sor Sir Hi­lary Beck­les said that the of­fer of a salary-source con­tri­bu­tion from the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship to en­hance stu­dent well-be­ing is an­oth­er part of the UWI CARES project, de­signed to em­pow­er any ex­clud­ed el­e­ment of the stu­dent body. He ex­plained: “This is a jus­tice ges­ture to fur­ther il­lus­trate our com­mit­ment. We are here to serve and sup­port them in their quest to suc­ceed.”

The ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship of the re­gion­al uni­ver­si­ty has recog­nised that the rapid tran­si­tion to emer­gency on­line teach­ing in re­sponse to the re­gion­al spread of COVID-19 has ex­posed the enor­mi­ty of chal­lenges fac­ing fi­nan­cial­ly and so­cial­ly-mar­gin­alised stu­dents.

With a stu­dent body of close to 50,000, UWI be­lieves that at least 10,000 of them are func­tion­ing in so­cial cir­cum­stance that makes it ex­ces­sive­ly dif­fi­cult to par­tic­i­pate equal­ly and eq­ui­tably in this mo­ment of dig­i­tal in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion.

The re­lease not­ed that prin­ci­pals across UWI’s five cam­pus­es have al­so stepped up in de­vel­op­ing re­me­di­al projects to con­front this re­al­i­ty and to re­store the lev­el play­ing field pro­vid­ed by the phys­i­cal class­room cul­ture.

It said that UWI’s alum­ni have been called up­on to par­tic­i­pate in fund-rais­ing and phil­an­thropy have al­so re­spond­ed by do­nat­ing hun­dreds of tablets.

At the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus, two funds cur­rent­ly ex­ist for stu­dents in need: the Stu­dent Hard­ship Fund and the Adopt-A-Stu­dent Pro­gramme, both man­aged by the Di­vi­sion of Stu­dent Ser­vices and De­vel­op­ment. In a re­cent re­lease, The St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal, Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Copeland has pledged to in­crease his di­rect con­tri­bu­tion to the Adopt-A-Stu­dent Pro­gramme.

The Adopt-A-Stu­dent Pro­gramme, which is avail­able for cur­rent­ly-reg­is­tered stu­dents, be­gan with con­tri­bu­tions from 32 staff mem­bers in Ju­ly 2005. It has now grown to hun­dreds of staff mem­bers mak­ing month­ly con­tri­bu­tions on the Cam­pus.

Ac­cord­ing to Copeland: “Many staff, through con­tri­bu­tions on the per­son­al or group lev­el (as a De­part­ment), con­tribute to these funds an­nu­al­ly and a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of ad­min­is­tra­tive, tech­ni­cal and ser­vice staff have been sup­port­ing stu­dents di­rect­ly over the years.”

Pro­fes­sor Copeland said he is pleased to see that this sup­port not on­ly con­tin­ues but has ex­pand­ed dur­ing this time.

“Al­though we can­not yet be cer­tain about the course of the pan­dem­ic, we are mak­ing sure that we put the nec­es­sary sup­port in place not on­ly for cur­rent stu­dents but for those who will join us come Sep­tem­ber as well,” said Copeland.