Are The First Years Of Knust Respected At All?
Are we even considered a part of this University?? There’s a notion that we’ve not been matriculated thus not worthy to be considered students of this University to begin with.
Our eligibility to vote became one that had to be plunged into a legal tussle and the verdict of the court was one that put the final nail in the coffin.
It took the intervention of the Dean of Students for us to be considered in the upcoming SRC elections.
We were deemed students enough when they took 115 Ghana cedis from each of the almost 30,000 Students who got admitted into this noble institution as SRC levies but not students enough to have a say in who leads us and who we place at the helm of affairs to decide what happens with our dues and make decisions on our behalf.
Despite the Dean of Students intervention, we can tell there has been no serious commitment from the office of the Electoral Commissioner to the first years as to the proper conduct of elections; what to do as first time voters on campus, the mode by which the elections is going to take place, the number of polling centres and their locations.
We’re not briefed about anything with regards to the elections as if we don’t even exist. Right from the start, there was a clear cut orchestration to malign and disenfranchise us. There has not been any clear cut information as to how the election is going to be conducted. We don’t know whether the elections is going to be done electronically or manually.
Don’t you think if anyone took us serious there’d be some sort of orientation from the office of the Electoral Commissioner on the conduct of elections for the first years on the voting pattern, the dos and donts of campus elections and all?
The silence of the Electoral Commissioner and other stakeholders on the plight of the first years is loud and clear and it’s deafening..
And any aspiring leader who thinks disenfranchising a section of the people he hopes to lead plays to his advantage is not fit to be a leader in the first place.
WE HEAR YOU AND YOR MESSAGE IS WELL RECEIVED.
Article by
Bernard Ohene Kofi Amoah.
First year student.
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