Restore Unitech pride, says Baloiloi

VICE-chancellor of the University of Technology Dr Misty Baloiloi has urged all on campus to rise above hatred and bitterness and move to restore the pride and integrity of the university as an institution of learning, intellectual advancement and moral grooming.
Baloiloi said this in an address at a flag-raising ceremony on campus to commemorate the country’s 35th independence anniversary last Thursday morning.
The ceremony, in which staff, students and the university community took part, was led by a small police party of reserve policemen and Unitech elementary school pupils, who marched, waving provincial flags and miniature PNG flags and led the singing of the National Anthem and the Pledge.
The event had set the tone for a return to normalcy on campus, where a deadline had been set for classes to start today.
“I call on all of us to come out of our walls of anger and bitterness to join hands once again as brothers and sisters who are called to a common purpose in this great university,” he said.
He condemned the violence in recent weeks that resulted in the death of a student and disruption of classes.
Baloiloi said everyone must learn from the trials and tribulations and make definitive changes if the university and her subjects were to move forward.
He said the events of the past two weeks had taken the university back 40 years to the days of illiteracy and uneducatedness, ethnic suspicion and fear, and untrustworthiness and disunity.
The university, he said, the pride of many who had graduated and holding responsible positions in the country and abroad, had been turned into an object of joke and ridicule because of the ethnic fights.
“We have turned our lecture rooms and student dormitories, which are supposed to be the safest places in the city, into places of fear and anxiety. We have taken a national repository of learning, of intellectual pursuit, of common sense and reason and changed it into a place of nonsense, of unreasonableness and emotional unintelligence.”
He appealed to everyone to use the 35th Independence anniversary of the country to rise above selfishness and bitterness and reassert Christian heritage and convent and pledge to continue to commit to God’s blessings.
“We must rise up above and beyond the language of blame-shifting and finger-pointing to the level of pledges and covenants with each other to take personal and collective responsibility for the building of the future of our country and our university together,” Baloiloi said.