By PETER KORUGL
STUDENTS at the University of Technology are expected to end their boycott and return to classes today – five weeks before their final examinations begin.
The Student Representative Council (SRC) issued a notice yesterday that students would be returning to classes, ending a boycott which began on Oct 5.
It also expressed regret that an earlier notice to students last week to return to classes was ignored.
“However after several meetings with the student body and the Unitech senior executive management, we have reached the solution that the students will return to classes and each academic department should allow flexibility on the academic assessments so that students are not penalised unfairly,” SRC leaders Sampson Apai and Cathy Magalu said in the notice.
“We want the lecturers to cooperate with the students because this issue is serious and we do not want it to get out of control.”
Some students fear that they would fail as they had missed out on several days of studies.
The university’s governing council had warned the students that the academic year would end on Nov 30 and that there would be no extension to make up for the classes that they had missed.
The matter was “non-negotiable”, registrar Allan Sako said last week.
However, the academic board advised the teaching staff to be “flexible”, leading some students to believe that they would still obtain a pass even if they did not sit for the examinations.
Some students said the boycott should have ended when the governing council and the SRC agreed on a 5% fee increase for next year as opposed to the planned 20%.
Others said they were prepared to return to classes earlier but were afraid that they would be harassed by others who wanted to prolong the issue.
“There are some students who are going to fail, perhaps they are deliberately trying to derail the academic year so that everyone has to repeat the courses next year,” a final-year student told The National.
Apart from the fee increase, the students have also accused the administration of mismanagement.
The National referred the allegations to the administration which has yet to respond.
The allegations are similar to those raised by the university’s National Staff Academic Association (NASA) early this year before the members went on strike.
The strike ended when NASA was promised an investigation by an internal team and the Ombudsman Commission.
The Office of Higher Education confirmed that the internal investigation did not get off the ground because the university did not have funds.
It is not known if the commission has proceeded with its investigation.
Police have, meanwhile, beefed up their presence at the campus in Taraka.