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Saturday, July 12, 2025

‘Resilience’ of UWI students during pandemic commended at graduation

by

Anna-Lisa Paul
1352 days ago
20211028
UWI St Augustine valedictorian Joshua Ramjattan.

UWI St Augustine valedictorian Joshua Ramjattan.

UWI

The 2021 grad­u­ates of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus have been recog­nised as one of the co­horts who have had to demon­strate the most re­silience and adapt­abil­i­ty in or­der to over­come the un­prece­dent­ed chal­lenge the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has cre­at­ed.

In com­mend­ing his fel­low uni­ver­si­ty-mates dur­ing yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny for the Fac­ul­ties of Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy and Food and Agri­cul­ture, vale­dic­to­ri­an Joshua Ram­jat­tan de­scribed their jour­ney as one which “has been unique­ly un­con­ven­tion­al in every sense of the word.”

He said while life is sel­dom pre­dictable, it would be a gross un­der­state­ment to say that 2020 did not present an un­prece­dent­ed chal­lenge for all.

De­liv­er­ing the vale­dic­to­ry speech from the cam­pus foot­ball field, Ram­jat­tan said de­spite the re­search and de­vel­op­ment which have oc­curred in the area of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, “it is of­ten dif­fi­cult to con­sid­er how rapid­ly and dras­ti­cal­ly our lives were forced to change in March of 2020 when this in­vis­i­ble pathogen was record­ed to have breached our bor­ders.”

He re­called study­ing in his apart­ment on March 13, 2020, for a Sta­tis­tics ex­am that same day, when the news first broke that schools and uni­ver­si­ties would be closed for one week fol­low­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s first record­ed case of COVID-19.

Ram­jat­tan re­mem­bered, “Lat­er that evening, many of us Math stu­dents wrote that ex­am in the C1 class­room, com­plete­ly un­aware of what the next week would look like. That was my last mem­o­ry on this cam­pus.”

Forced to tran­si­tion with­in one week to a mode of learn­ing with which, for the most part, the grad­u­ates had been un­fa­mil­iar, he re­vealed that the C3 lec­ture room and FST 114 had been abrupt­ly trans­formed in­to a vir­tu­al class­room…lim­it­ed to a shared screen, a chat-box and a ‘raise hand’ fea­ture for ques­tions.

“Make no mis­take, this was no easy un­der­tak­ing,” he said.

Valedictorian Selena Mohammed, of the Faculty of Engineering and Law.

Valedictorian Selena Mohammed, of the Faculty of Engineering and Law.

UWI

Ram­jat­tan ad­mit­ted, “The loss of hu­man con­nec­tion even­tu­al­ly be­gan to take its toll on us.

“Knowl­edge was not re­tained in the typ­i­cal way. Ex­ams were writ­ten on pa­per while read­ing ques­tions on a com­put­er mon­i­tor, all while cling­ing on to the last glim­mer of hope that our Wi-Fi and elec­tric­i­ty would hold out for the du­ra­tion of the ex­am. Some­how, we en­dured.”

Ap­plaud­ing the achieve­ments of the grad­u­at­ing fac­ul­ties in the face of the ad­ver­si­ties they had all faced dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, he not­ed, “I con­tin­ue to be amazed and in­spired by all stu­dents at all lev­els of our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem who are still in this fight to­day, press­ing for­ward de­spite the chal­lenges of vir­tu­al learn­ing. We are part of a gen­er­a­tion asked to dis­pose with the busi­ness-as-usu­al ap­proach­es and rein­vent the shape of the box.”

Look­ing ahead as they bid farewell to this chap­ter, Ram­jat­tan ad­vised, “No class of grad­u­ates ever en­ters a per­fect world. Yet, it is safe to say that we are mov­ing in­to a tru­ly re­mark­able pe­ri­od of hu­man ex­is­tence, filled with its own dis­tinct prob­lems. We are still deal­ing with a dead­ly pan­dem­ic, with new vari­ants and in­equal­i­ty in glob­al vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion, as well as vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy.”

Not­ing the en­tire world was plagued by the ef­fects of cli­mate change, crime, in­equal­i­ty, food in­se­cu­ri­ty and un­der­em­ploy­ment, Ram­jat­tan said, “These prob­lems re­quire rad­i­cal re­spons­es and an ex­cep­tion­al class of per­sons ready and will­ing to chal­lenge the sta­tus quo on the pre­vi­ous at­tempts at so­lu­tions. The world needs per­sons like the en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­en­tists among us, who will be res­olute in ex­pand­ing our in­vest­ment in re­new­able and al­ter­na­tive sources of en­er­gy.

“Grad­u­ates, the un­for­tu­nate re­al­i­ty is that our gen­er­a­tion does not have the priv­i­lege of a choice when it comes to such prob­lems. The dead­line to act has come and gone and we are liv­ing through the ef­fects of in­ac­tion right now.”

He said pol­i­cy­mak­ers will re­ly on these grad­u­ates for sound sci­en­tif­ic da­ta and ex­per­tise that will in­form their judge­ments.

“It is im­per­a­tive that we re­mem­ber to abide by all the sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples and pro­fes­sion­al codes of con­duct which we have been taught,” he ad­vised.

Ram­jat­tan al­so ap­pealed to per­sons to en­gage in some in­tro­spec­tion.

Lynette Seebaran-Suite received an Honorary Doctorate of Law.

Lynette Seebaran-Suite received an Honorary Doctorate of Law.

UWI

“These are not or­di­nary cir­cum­stances, and it is for­tu­nate that we are no or­di­nary grad­u­ates. While the chemists among us may dis­agree, I be­lieve that the car­bon atoms from which we are made are more strong­ly bond­ed than in any group of grad­u­ates who have come and gone be­fore us. We are not made of the same ma­te­r­i­al as oth­ers. We have been test­ed, pushed to the break­ing point and the lim­it of our po­ten­tial was sought.

“The math­e­mati­cians among us know there is no greater proof than this past year and a half to know that that lim­it does not ex­ist. We are unique­ly pre­pared and po­si­tioned to con­front the prob­lems of to­mor­row.”


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