KahawaTungu Reporter
A section of USIU students is planning to go on strike from Thursday over what they call poor management and insensitive of the current administration led by Vice Chancellor Prof Paul Zeleza.
According to the school of science students who are mostly from the Bachelor of Pharmacy course, the university grading system is too high and failing students en masse so as to get them to repeat courses and make further payments.
The USIU grading system is high and has been a bone of contention with most students claiming that they are not being treated like other students in the country.
Bachelor of Pharmacy students has not been in class for the whole semester, failing even to take their mid-semester exams. As the semester near the end, the students have insisted that they are not going to resume classes unless the issues are addressed.
Security warning from USIU administration over the strike read;
A group of individuals have organized a protest along USIU Road on 28th March, 2019 as from 0800hrs to 1100hrs. Students, staff, faculty and their visitors are asked to avoid accessing the campus through the main gate during the protest.
The alternative access point to the campus will be gate B. Gate B can be accessed through Mirema drive, Lumumba drive and or Northern By-Pass and it will be open for use as from 0600hrs in the morning.
You are advised to avoid USIU Road during the above period. Besides, you are expected to exercise caution if unexpectedly in the vicinity of large gatherings.
Regards,
Peter K. Omusula
While the administration is mum on this and using all means to suspend or expel students, the current strike is a sign of an underlying problem.
The students are not the only aggrieved members of the USIU-Africa community with staff now claiming that they have been targeted for holding divergent views and suspended or sacked when they voice their concerns.
The new Vice Chancellor has adopted an authoritarian method of administration which he doesn’t apply directly but through the Legal Director, Hellen Ombima, and Finance Director Judith Obura.
While the wife of the VC (Prof. Cassandra Veney) also teaches at USIU, she has also deployed high handedness and almost runs the International Relations department like her own property. She normally brags that she is the VC’s wife and so she deserves some authority in the school.
Hellen has silenced any voice of dissent with students now blocked from even voicing concerns on social media and posts removed by a team led by the Principal Marketing Officer, Dan Muchai. Any calls for the university to be more listening and receptive are wildly dismissed.
READ: JKUAT Students Protest Killing Of First Year Girl
Concerns are being raised that the university might be degenerating so quickly it might not even last another 2 years as the VC continues to amass wealth and travel 70% of the time while Hellen Ombima and Judith Obura turn most of the departments into own cash-cows.
Parents now fear that the school might go the Daystar way if no intervention is made soon.
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