KNUST SCHOOL FEEDING PROGRAMME
… SRC BEST INNOVATION SO FAR?
This year’s SRC week celebrations saw a lot of innovations that still keep fascinating and at the same time irritating a number of level headed students around. It was the first time SRC Week was celebrated concurrently with a hall’s week celebration. It was the first time, a girlfriend of the SRC president was actively involved in the planning and execution of all activities embodied in the programme. I think an amendment should be made, so that our constitution will recognise the office of the first lady. One particular activity that has kept my mouth agape and my fingers still scratching my head is what our very smart SRC decided to name ‘SRC FOOD BAZAAR’.
According to the Encarta dictionary, ‘BAZAAR’ means sales of goods to raise money for charity, often held outdoors. So who was fooling who, when the SRC promised to organise a food bazaar and ended up organising a school feeding programme? Whose idea was it? What rationale was behind such an event? What if even half of the student populace had decided to attend that event? Was there any sinister motive behind the scenes? Until some of these questions are answered in good faith, some of us can only bow our heads in shame and disappointment as we take our last steps out of KNUST.
The Yaw Oduro led administration had all the power and the goodwill to organise a food bazaar, which could have even brought few coins into the SRC coffers. It is just a matter of inviting food vendors to converge at the Royal Parade grounds and selling their products at subsidised prices. People will still patronise it. Even if the people in charge did not have a fair idea of what a food bazaar is, they could have thought of other ways to feed students, not necessarily with physical foods. SOCIOSO’s ‘AFTER SCHOOL, WHAT NEXT’ program is a very good example the SRC could have copied. It would have even helped salvage the dwindling reputation of the SRC.
The idea itself was ill-conceived and the programme itself was bizarre. Was it a deliberate agenda to create the atmosphere for students to fight over the food provided so that the illicit dealings of the organisers will be covered? Was it some KNUST students who are still unrefined after spending some time in a university like ours? It is alleged that some ‘gentlemen’ of our noble institution were picking ‘kelewele’ right from the oil. Food was spilled on the floor and people kicked the butts of each other just to have sips of the soft drinks served around there. The undeniable truth about this shameful incident was that it was a deliberate plot by the student powers that be to cover up certain dishonest activities that will come up very soon. Secondly, some students still remain unrefined despite the numerous avenues that abound for the polishing of the brutish lives that we once lived.
Sadly enough, individuals and groups which are seen as watchdogs of students politics were either in full support or totally quiet over the whole debacle of a food bazaar. Was it that, their palms were greased or they were busily enjoying the huge consignments of food and drink that was smuggled glaringly to them. Are they now selling their reputation for pittance or they are now showing their long-hidden selfish desires?
If we want to rattle about these irrational decisions by some of our student leaders, we will grow grey hair without knowing it. However, let the younger generation learn from the folly of the older generation. Let upcoming leaders think outside the box and implement prudent and rational policies. Also, whoever the organisers of the SRC SCHOOL FEEDING PROGRAMME were, they should with all the humility in them, go to the executives of the AGRIC STUDENTS ASSOCIATION. They organised a real food bazaar recently. It will help some of them pick few lessons so that they will not make laughing signposts of themselves when they move out of school.
Lastly, all these incidents we are witnessing just suggest to us that people should have some level of experience before been put in some positions. The truth is always painful but it must be said.
Courage Ahiati.
Couragesdiary.blogspot.com
courageislove@gmail.com
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
FACELESS ATTACKS ON KNUST
FACELESS ATTACKS ON KNUST
…the nuisance of ‘Nana Abrokwa, ‘Victor Pul’ and their ‘Siblings’
In recent times, our noble institution, KNUST has enjoyed tremendous rise both in infrastructure and international reputation. We rose from being 20th in University world rankings to more respectable higher heights. One thing that adds up to these feat that keeps our competitors mute is the aesthetic nature of our campus. The well-kept lawns and nice landscaping just adds to our ‘swag’.
I am very sure the good reputation of the school currently will make any leader both at the staff and students level so proud and confident. In that same spirit, it will make leadership position more attractive to others than it used to. It is in the wake of this that I see a lot of ambitious young men and women girding their loins to take over the realms of leadership in the students political spheres. It is a positive signal when you see such enthusiasm and participatory spirit rising up on campus.
However good and positive the pictures might be showing, there is this worrying canker, which if not addressed quickly and substantially, will go a long way to cast a slur on both our aesthetic environment and our seemingly attractive leadership positions. This is the desperate, indiscriminate, unreasonable and unintellectual smearing of KNUST with all kinds of posters, papers and pamphlets bearing the names of students supposedly aspiring to various positions on campus. If these posters were just posted on provided notice boards and other convenient places intelligently, it would not have raised any eyebrows.
Sadly enough, when one takes a stroll through campus, one would witness a sudden surge of wall defacing revolutionists on our campus. The chief culprits of these deliberate and conscious and puerile behaviours are names like NANA ABROKWA and VICTOR PUL. There are numerous other culprits but these two names seem to be the superpowers of the game. Just take a walk from the Commercial area down through the Block A of Africa hall and take a cursory look at the back of that particular hall. It has been seriously defaced with the posters or teasers of a certain NANA ABROKWA. Signposts of different departments and bodies on campus, giving various vital information have been plastered with these same posters. The menace has spread all over campus that even the semi-literate photocopy guys around are becoming fed up with this nuisance.
What makes these unintelligent behaviours more worrying and dangerous is what they are aspiring for. If they were a group of anti- NICE KNUST crusaders, it would have been a bit understandable. However, these are people seeking high offices of students’ leadership. My understanding of leadership is the ability to guide, direct and influence people. So if those aspiring to these high offices are putting up such unruly behaviours, then the multi-million cedi question I ask is, is there a better future for KNUST and student leadership as a whole? If someone aspiring to be the next SRC president has the shameful gust and audacity to deface our only female hall in a desperate attempt to gain recognition, what information is he sending out to KNUST? Maybe he will deface our ladies on campus when he is made a leader or he will turn KNUST into some lawless jungle. Maybe that person will create a personality cult for himself by having a hall sprayed with his name all over it. Or yet still, they will endorse lawlessness on campus.
Sorry enough, this unruly behaviour has been tolerated for long and these culprits always manage to go through all the electoral vetting on campus without any scratch and go on to occupy undeserved positions on campus. it is hard time we speak against this nuisance and stand against it as well. My octogenarian grandmother who has never seen the inside of a classroom before will wail for KNUST, should she come here one day and see the mess created by these ‘enemies of the university’.
I think the office of the dean of students should take a cue from their counterparts in the University of Ghana, and start placing fines on such people. Other concrete and punitive measures should be put in place to deter others from joining these masquerades. The student bodies concerned should also take up arms against them. More so, departments and other bodies who have their sign posts and bill boards as victims of this politics of desperation should seek their pound of flesh.
I do not know if this NANA ABROKWA, VICTOR PUL and the like are pseudonyms, nicknames, pet names or real names. If they are real names, then students who will go to the polls and undertake other electoral processes should take a second and critical look at them. What is even more annoying is that habit of them writing the sayings of people and putting their names under it without appreciating the copyrights owners of those sayings. Plagiarism of the highest order, which every writer or creator will frown on.
It is very unfortunate that we want to inculcate this attitude into our students’ political culture. Let us renew the old things and be up to speed with the world. No one is a saint. We are all guilty in one way or the other. Let us not take bitterness out of this plea. Let us pick out the common sense in this piece and use it in building a better KNUST, with an aesthetic environment, devoid of lawless student leaders. Long live KNUST and short live the dreams of lawless people creating nuisance in order to become student leaders.
NB: the writer did not write in vacuum. He has travelled the path that these current ones are aspiring to tread and have a fair idea of the concerns he has raised.
Courage Ahiati
courageislove@gmail.com
couragesdiary.blogspot.com
…the nuisance of ‘Nana Abrokwa, ‘Victor Pul’ and their ‘Siblings’
In recent times, our noble institution, KNUST has enjoyed tremendous rise both in infrastructure and international reputation. We rose from being 20th in University world rankings to more respectable higher heights. One thing that adds up to these feat that keeps our competitors mute is the aesthetic nature of our campus. The well-kept lawns and nice landscaping just adds to our ‘swag’.
I am very sure the good reputation of the school currently will make any leader both at the staff and students level so proud and confident. In that same spirit, it will make leadership position more attractive to others than it used to. It is in the wake of this that I see a lot of ambitious young men and women girding their loins to take over the realms of leadership in the students political spheres. It is a positive signal when you see such enthusiasm and participatory spirit rising up on campus.
However good and positive the pictures might be showing, there is this worrying canker, which if not addressed quickly and substantially, will go a long way to cast a slur on both our aesthetic environment and our seemingly attractive leadership positions. This is the desperate, indiscriminate, unreasonable and unintellectual smearing of KNUST with all kinds of posters, papers and pamphlets bearing the names of students supposedly aspiring to various positions on campus. If these posters were just posted on provided notice boards and other convenient places intelligently, it would not have raised any eyebrows.
Sadly enough, when one takes a stroll through campus, one would witness a sudden surge of wall defacing revolutionists on our campus. The chief culprits of these deliberate and conscious and puerile behaviours are names like NANA ABROKWA and VICTOR PUL. There are numerous other culprits but these two names seem to be the superpowers of the game. Just take a walk from the Commercial area down through the Block A of Africa hall and take a cursory look at the back of that particular hall. It has been seriously defaced with the posters or teasers of a certain NANA ABROKWA. Signposts of different departments and bodies on campus, giving various vital information have been plastered with these same posters. The menace has spread all over campus that even the semi-literate photocopy guys around are becoming fed up with this nuisance.
What makes these unintelligent behaviours more worrying and dangerous is what they are aspiring for. If they were a group of anti- NICE KNUST crusaders, it would have been a bit understandable. However, these are people seeking high offices of students’ leadership. My understanding of leadership is the ability to guide, direct and influence people. So if those aspiring to these high offices are putting up such unruly behaviours, then the multi-million cedi question I ask is, is there a better future for KNUST and student leadership as a whole? If someone aspiring to be the next SRC president has the shameful gust and audacity to deface our only female hall in a desperate attempt to gain recognition, what information is he sending out to KNUST? Maybe he will deface our ladies on campus when he is made a leader or he will turn KNUST into some lawless jungle. Maybe that person will create a personality cult for himself by having a hall sprayed with his name all over it. Or yet still, they will endorse lawlessness on campus.
Sorry enough, this unruly behaviour has been tolerated for long and these culprits always manage to go through all the electoral vetting on campus without any scratch and go on to occupy undeserved positions on campus. it is hard time we speak against this nuisance and stand against it as well. My octogenarian grandmother who has never seen the inside of a classroom before will wail for KNUST, should she come here one day and see the mess created by these ‘enemies of the university’.
I think the office of the dean of students should take a cue from their counterparts in the University of Ghana, and start placing fines on such people. Other concrete and punitive measures should be put in place to deter others from joining these masquerades. The student bodies concerned should also take up arms against them. More so, departments and other bodies who have their sign posts and bill boards as victims of this politics of desperation should seek their pound of flesh.
I do not know if this NANA ABROKWA, VICTOR PUL and the like are pseudonyms, nicknames, pet names or real names. If they are real names, then students who will go to the polls and undertake other electoral processes should take a second and critical look at them. What is even more annoying is that habit of them writing the sayings of people and putting their names under it without appreciating the copyrights owners of those sayings. Plagiarism of the highest order, which every writer or creator will frown on.
It is very unfortunate that we want to inculcate this attitude into our students’ political culture. Let us renew the old things and be up to speed with the world. No one is a saint. We are all guilty in one way or the other. Let us not take bitterness out of this plea. Let us pick out the common sense in this piece and use it in building a better KNUST, with an aesthetic environment, devoid of lawless student leaders. Long live KNUST and short live the dreams of lawless people creating nuisance in order to become student leaders.
NB: the writer did not write in vacuum. He has travelled the path that these current ones are aspiring to tread and have a fair idea of the concerns he has raised.
Courage Ahiati
courageislove@gmail.com
couragesdiary.blogspot.com
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