The Student Representative Council of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), has asked 22 students who have been rusticated to bin the school’s directive.
The SRC is asking the affected students not to heed the directive by the school’s authorities because the SRC, which is the umbrella body of all students, was not informed about the decision before the university took that action.
Twenty-two students of the University of Cape Coast were rusticated after investigations cited them for their involvement in a clashes between students of the University, University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in March this year. The clash which occurred during the hall week celebration of the Atlantic Hall left three students seriously injured.
“SRC president, Tony Henry Arthur says the students cannot heed the directive of the University when they have not been communicated to. He wants the students to continue writing their exams contrary to the University’s directive for the 22 students to leave campus immediately,” 3FM’s Central regional correspondent Thomas Vincent Cann reported the SRC president as saying.
The 22 students, most of whom were executives of the Atlantic Hall and members of the 55th Hall Week celebration Planning Committee were rusticated for two semesters except the President of the Hall, Enoch Bart Plange, who was to serve four semesters.
Meanwhile, the SRC says the students should treat the directive suspending them as rumour.
Director of Public Affairs, Major K. Baah-Bentum (retd.) had told TV3 that the leadership of the hall were being punished for “showing solidarity” with those involved in the violence by not giving them out.
He also explained that the leadership, before the hall week, had signed a bond to ensure an incident-free event.
But the school’s stance appears to have incurred the displeasure of some old students of the university.
An executive member of the old students association who gave his name as George told Stephen Anti on 3FM Monday that it was bad for the school’s authorities to attach the leadership to the wrong doing.
He believes the school could have done a better job to get the actual perpetrators instead of punishing innocent students.
If it is about leadership, then the hall masters and dean of students should also be penalized and not just the students, he argued.
His position was to some extent shared by a legal practitioner Kofi Diaba.
He said “it is not right” for the university to punish the leadership if it is unable to show exactly their negligence. The school should be able to prove that the leadership had power to stop the violence but failed to do so and for that reason should bear the consequence.
Kofi Djaba asked the university authorities to do “thorough investigations” to get the actual culprits.
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