GIJ Locks Out Students Over Planned Demo
The Ghana Institute of journalism is denying students access to both the Osu-Ringway campus and the new one at Dzorwulu.
The decision according to security officers on duty is “an order from above.”
This comes after the management of GIJ issued a communiqué on Tuesday Mach 23, 2021, directing all students “who paid their fees after the registration deadline to defer their programme.”
According to the communiqué, management took the decision “at its meeting held on Monday, March 22, 2021” a day into their revision week in preparation for their first semester exams.
Although it is unclear why school authorities decided to lock out students, some observers believe it has to do with the planned student demonstration scheduled for today, March 24, 2021.
Meanwhile, management and the Dean of Students will not comment on the matter “until further notice.”
Lecturers are however being allowed on campus.
GIJ students fume over deferment directive
Students of GIJ are unhappy with a directive given them to defer their programme for paying their fees late.
A member of the Interim Committee of the Students’ Representative Council, Theodore Mawutor Abiwu in an interview described the order as “callous and insensitive”.
“I think this action by the management is a callous one. I think it is inhuman, and I think management has not been fair to students. These students in question have actually paid the fees they were required to, whether it is 60% or 100%. The only crime these students did is to be poor. Their only crime is the fact that they could not meet the deadline [for payment of fees] as proposed by the school. How can you punish a student who wants to change his destiny and that of his family?”
“For crying out loud, we live in the era of COVID-19 and businesses and livelihoods of people have been affected. Students who did not have the means to pay on time were out there seeking for support, working themselves out to pay fees that have been increased. An increase we pleaded with authorities to take away because it is burdensome. So if such a student was even late in paying the fees, the best thing was to block the system so that they will not even pay the fees in the first place so they know their fate beforehand. So why wait for students to make payments and then four days to examination, you send a communiqué that they should defer their programme for a year? Some of these students are in level 400 and have about five months to complete the school, why do you want to alter their future because of late payment of fees?” he fumed.