First Year U.W.I stu­dents at­tend the Ma­tric­u­la­tion cer­e­mo­ny, decades-long tra­di­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty, to so­lid­i­fy their en­trance in­to the In­sti­tu­tion, plant­i­ng crop seeds and view­ing amaz­ing per­for­mances by fel­low U.W.I staff mem­bers. De­tails fol­low in this press re­lease...

 “As new­ly mint­ed mem­bers of the St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus and the Stu­dent’s Guild, you are ex­pect­ed to take your civic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty se­ri­ous­ly. Be­come in­volved and in­vest­ed in your com­mu­ni­ty – here and/or where you live. Al­ways re­mem­ber the adage, to whom much is giv­en, much is ex­pect­ed.”

Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine, Pro Vice-Chan­cel­lor and Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal of the St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), so cau­tioned first-year stu­dents of the St. Au­gus­tine Cam­pus’ 2022 Ma­tric­u­la­tion and Wel­come Cer­e­mo­ny held on Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 15, 2022, the first in-per­son cer­e­mo­ny af­ter a two-year hia­tus.

Pro­fes­sor An­toine fur­ther ad­vised: “At St. Au­gus­tine, you will re­ceive the skill sets and un­cov­er vast reser­voirs of ex­cel­lence to be­gin the process of ap­ply­ing new knowl­edge to world prob­lems. Through your to­tal im­mer­sion in UWI life, you will make the con­nec­tions and ex­pand be­yond pre­vi­ous­ly in­su­lar hori­zons to see the beau­ty and grace in each Caribbean ter­ri­to­ry. As ‘One UWI’, you will con­tin­ue to be the main uni­fy­ing force of this One Caribbean, con­nect­ed by much more than the Caribbean Sea but by an in­fi­nite well­spring of vi­tal­i­ty that has sur­vived slav­ery, in­den­ture­ship, and colo­nial­ism”.

Dr Dawn-Marie De Four-Gill, Cam­pus Reg­is­trar, told the packed au­di­ence that the Ma­tric­u­la­tion Cer­e­mo­ny is a decades-long tra­di­tion where new stu­dents are recog­nised as mem­bers of the aca­d­e­m­ic com­mu­ni­ty of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies; they sign the Uni­ver­si­ty reg­is­ter and re­cite the aca­d­e­m­ic vow. They al­so wit­ness their first Aca­d­e­m­ic Pro­ces­sion with which the cer­e­mo­ny be­gins.

As part of their First Year Ex­pe­ri­ence ac­tiv­i­ties, hun­dreds of stu­dents plant­ed food crop seeds and placed their names on the ves­sel con­tain­ing their plant­ed seed. The Cam­pus Reg­is­trar con­firmed that the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture had al­ready re-plant­ed about 500 of these seeds. The stu­dents would be ex­pect­ed to sup­port the growth of these crops by vis­it­ing the fields through­out their aca­d­e­m­ic years. In their grad­u­a­tion year, the Cam­pus - with the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture – will host a Har­vest where stu­dents would be in­vit­ed to share the fruits of their labour.

Oth­er speak­ers in­clud­ed Pres­i­dent of the Alum­ni As­so­ci­a­tion Cheri­dan Woodruffe and Pres­i­dent of the Guild of Stu­dents, Kobe Sandy. In ad­di­tion, there were per­for­mances by The UWI Arts Chorale, un­der the di­rec­tion of Mr. Jes­sel Mur­ray, Se­nior Lec­tur­er and Head, De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts, as well as a spo­ken word pre­sen­ta­tion by Amíl­car Sanatan, PhD. stu­dent in Cul­tur­al Stud­ies and part-time As­sis­tant Lec­tur­er at the In­sti­tute for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies.

Solange Joseph, a first year Fac­ul­ty of Law stu­dent, and grad­u­ate of the St. Au­gus­tine Girls High School cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly signed the Ma­tric­u­la­tion Reg­is­ter on be­half of the in­com­ing co­hort, to sig­ni­fy the ad­her­ence to the tenets of the Aca­d­e­m­ic Vow and the pur­suit of ex­cel­lence.

The cer­e­mo­ny con­clud­ed with the joint light­ing of “The Flame of Ex­cel­lence” by Cam­pus Prin­ci­pal Pro­fes­sor Rose-Marie Belle An­toine and Guild Pres­i­dent Kobe Sandy, rep­re­sent­ing the union of the Cam­pus ad­min­is­tra­tion and the stu­dent body, in sup­port of new stu­dents.