Harassment In The Educational System Of Ghana

In deep recognition of our Universities waking up to the call to link Research to Service to community, The University of Ghana Research Centre (UGRC) at Okumening in the Eastern Region must be commended for coming out with findings for the preservation of fresh oranges for 60 days, where fresh harvested oranges could be waxed, put in crates lined with polythene sheets and covered with perforated polythene sheets in the open.

In a like manner, the latest discovery at our gallant University for Development Studies (UDS), Wa Campus, where a student was said to have exchanged blows with his lecturer in an examination hall displaying the development of boxing in Ghana with prospective Super Bantamweight Champions from the “Intellectual Fraternity” cannot be thrown into the dungeon.

More seriously, it is vilifying to reference Joy News on Tuesday, 22nd February, 2011 mentioned in the headlines that mobile phone usage by non-tertiary students was going to be banned with the findings of about twelve (12) Junior High School students who were said to have been involved in some kind of orgy, filmed with a mobile phone and was being circulated somewhere in Kumasi. It is equally of great concern to examine an incident where ten final year students including the Senior Prefect, Abubakari Abdul Razak, have summarily been dismissed for hooting at an alleged provocatively dressed daughter of the Assistant Headmaster (Academics) of the Nalerigu Senior High School (SHS).

The case of sexual harassment equally seems to have become endemic in Ghana’s educational system with some female students expressing outrage at the extent to which most teachers or lecturers demand sexual favours in exchange for, at best, good grades and at worst mere sexual satisfaction. It is quite obvious that this is the situation in the country’s tertiary institutions with a strong indication that the canker has found its way into the second cycle institutions. At a time when the country is grappling with incessant demands from teachers, it is vital to examine the profession and weed out the sexual predators who are threatening the gains made in girl child education.

The surge and skyrocketing heights of these “Academic Tsunamis” engulfing the current state of our academic serendipity and advancement, calls for an emergency consensus ad idem to unravel the remote causes and postulate measures for its immediate amputation.

It therefore became socially disgraceful, academically deficient, culturally deviant and morally devastating when Students of the University of Ghana at the Mensah Sabbah Hall were caught on tape molesting a woman suspected to have stolen a mobile phone. They were said to have pounced on their victim known only as Amina and stripped her naked and inserted their fingers into the most sacred part of her anatomy.

With this I implore the Students’ Representative Council of The University of Ghana, the University Students’ Association of Ghana and the National Union of Ghana Students not to sleep on these matters especially the latter, but publicly condemn it with the momentum and enthusiasm that the issue deserves. With this I call on the University authorities to expedite actions, fast track this issue and bring these “academic apologies” to book in order to keep the sanity and sanctity of the University and University education in Ghana as a whole, with strict punitive measures which would perpetually defer and deter others from this unscrupulous and unfortunate melodramatic display of constitutional and sociocultural blunder.

It equally behooves the youth associations, youth advocates, student activist unions like NUGS to engage government for the judicious utilization of the US$ 65m World Bank allocation to finance the National Youth Employment Programme (to support youth groups and individuals who come out with brilliant business ideas or proposals to start their businesses). The current unemployed graduates should benefit from this package since entrepreneurship and the clarion call on today’s graduate to set their own private businesses, would certainly be a mirage without adequate provision of resources (capital).

“The youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity”, a former Prime Minister of Britain, Benjamin Desraeli once said. Until we decide to speak, seek to contribute and take a centre stage in issues that are of paramount interest to us as youth collectively devoid of party ideologies and personal idiosyncrasies, we will forever carry calabashes on our heads parading the corridors of the “powers that be” for leftover food.

By: Maxwell Klu

Student Activist

University of Mines and Technology, Tarkwa

maxckenzy2001@yahoo.co.uk

+233249554990