File
LEFT: The grounds of the University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston. RIGHT: Wilberne Persaud.
Wilberne Persaud, Financial Gleaner Columnist
Part two of this article has undergone a third revision because of apparent intrigue. The first draft began this way: My editor has let me know that the document submitted 'on behalf' of the Mona Association of Postgraduate Students (MAPS) was unsigned.
The subhead inserted by the Financial Gleaner last week in part one of this article was no error.
The editorial question was: were the postgraduate students fearful of victimisation? The statement was carried because its substance, true or false, was deemed sufficiently important to publish.
I continued: Really. An association of postgraduate students should, at the very least, have appended its slate of officers as responsible for the exposition - stand up for your rights, principles, freedom and democracy. You don't need Bob Marley or Peter Tosh: you can do it on your own.
A university is nothing if not a democracy: lecturer, professor, principal, president, dean, guild of students president, are never 'always right'.
Superior institutional position guarantees neither truth nor wisdom.
It is precisely universities' openness to challenge that increases the probability of superior position coinciding with truth and wisdom! And from me, editorial clarification is needed for the contradictory suggestion at the end of last week's piece: that Eric Williams would have approved of Irvine's ideas: he wouldn't. This refers only to the single university and shared experience which we explore next.
Also, vice chancellor emeritus McIntyre, spells his name Alister despite the Financial Gleaner's insistence to the contrary.
Here is the major element guiding the third revision: The Gleaner advises that MAPS denies that the article was submitted by the MAPS executive. A letter was published to the effect.
Clarification aside, back now to creation of a single UCWI.
SHARED RESIDENTIAL EXPERIENCE
Irvine argued that if a University College of the West Indies were to be created there should be a single university or no university.
The feeling was that strong.
Making the case for a single residential university, Irvine expressed discerning views that would make greater sense to many after the partly CIA-inspired explosion of racial tensions and disturbances in Guyana of the 1960s.
The Irvine Committee argued that it must not be assumed that a West Indian youth, living possibly upon very small means in lodgings in some large city and attending lectures, is necessarily laying up a rich store of culture or strengthening either his character or physique for his coming work in life.
"We believe that if West Indian students could work together in surroundings of dignity and beauty, living in close community with each other and with teachers of the highest intellectual quality, and enjoying all the cultural and athletic activities possible in such conditions, they would develop fully, not only as individuals, but as West Indians.
Many of them might thus so strengthen their desire to serve their own people that it would not weaken when they went on to complete and broaden their experience overseas.
This is perhaps, the only means by which the present divisions and insularities can be broken down. It must be remembered that barriers exist not only as between the colonies, but as between the races within some of the colonies.
These divisions are of the most obstinate kind and the most hindering to the development of a healthy polity. There is, perhaps, no atmosphere in which interracial cooperation and friendship are more possible than that of a residential university, and the association thus formed might powerfully influence for good the future development of some of these composite societies." Uncanny, isn't it, to find such a clear grasp of the problems of insularity, potential racial tension and the explicit recognition of the West Indies as "composite societies" discussed in the mid-1940s? Solving these problems was seen to be possible through education, enjoyment and appreciation of cultural activities and cooperation among the people of the Caribbean. Created in the image of the Irvine report, the UCWI opened its doors in 1948 at Mona, former sugar estate and Gibraltar Camp.
By 1954, after merely six years of life, meagrely funded infant UCWI had already gained high regard internationally.
This resulted from the work its faculty undertook.
A 1954 independent expert report concluded that: "the College has, in our view, made a most remarkable beginning. Its six years have resulted in the establishment of an institution which bids fair to make its mark in the University world. "We have emphasised the excellence of the research in the humanities, in pure and applied science and in medicine which is being undertaken at the College. We have emphasised too the importance of the fact that in the course of the promotion of their research the members of the College have had an admirable regard to the special conditions and needs of the West Indies."
EXCELLENCE ATTRACTING GRANTS
Also in 1954, the Nuffield Foundation made a huge benefaction to the College - a capital grant of £50,000 in recognition of its work and as "a tribute to its considerable achievements."
That the grant was important and of great value in 1954 is beyond question, at today's current value it would exceed millions of pounds sterling. Furthermore, Nuffield left decisions on use of the grant entirely up to the College itself. It was required merely to report activities every third year.
What a tribute! Would this be feasible today amid Jamaica's aroma of corruption?
The early University of the West Indies (UWI) could also brag about its impeccable record in managing funds and optimising scarce resources. Here's a tidbit: go into the archives of the institution - sadly, inexplicably, still housed in health-challenged trailers - and you will find principal Taylor's comments on one quarter of one of those flimsy yellow copy paper sheets filed among discussions of pilferage from college stores.
ATTITUDE OF FRUGALITY
Mind you, war scarcity created an attitude of frugality which was perhaps unsustainable.
Undoubtedly, UWI began as and still might correctly regard itself as "the leading institution in the area of research, (and brag) about its numerous publications in top international journals and research relevant to our West Indian and wider global societies'.
But more importantly our question should be: Will UWI be able, and continue so to do in the next decade, in the future? And if not, why not?
The problem is not merely funding and budgetary allocation - the major element of the alleged published statement of the issues.
There may have been flawed budgetary allocation or priority setting as suggested. For some time now it has been argued that the university sees itself first as responsive to administrators, then staff, then students and finally ancillary staff.
Students have suggested they are seen as nuisances in the halls of administration. And the present claim of bad decisions, wasteful and or improperly prioritised expenditure can perhaps be substantiated - destruction of the buildings where the first lecture was delivered, the picket fence and inappropriate tiles among others, need to be assessed.
But the past has gone. It is to the future that we must look to create arrangements that truly 'unlock the potential'.
It is to the prevailing concept of a 'regional' UWI and the role it must play that we need to turn. For the Mona campus concentration on merely turning out a workforce for Jamaica is not where it's going to be.
Vision, bold, brave and audacious perception, self-critical introspection and equitably shared creature comfort sacrifice are necessary.
Graduate and research students particularly, do have an undeniably important and central place in all this. So their dubbed bastard or attributed, does highlight issues of importance.
wilbe65@yahoo.com
SOURCE: Financial Gleaner, Friday, February 29, 2008.
