UPNG Student leaders oppose termination of academic year

The decision to  terminate 2016 academic year by the University of Papua New Guinea Council has not gone down well with student leaders.   Student leaders, who represented the four regions met today and raised their concerns following the announcement by the university yesterday afternoon.   The student leaders  expressed their grievances in a joint statement.  

 They stated that the decision to terminate the academic years was lame because most of the students were prepared to return to class.   They said the recent incident involving the burring of security vehicles and the university printery was not part of the protest but was done by certain drunken students who had a confrontation with the securities at the time.   The students also said the university council should not use the destruction of the properties as grounds to terminate the academic year as it would have adverse effect on mostly the first year students and the 2017 intakes from secondary schools.   They said the termination would also affect the government sanctioned commission of inquiry into the shooting of students by police.   The students also claimed that the initial protest commenced following approval from the university’s vice-chancellor Albert Mellam after a formal letter was written to his office by the SRC president on April 26.   The students produced the copy of the letter which contained the approval of Professor Mellam who approved the letter that same day for the forum to go ahead.   “The university cannot pass the buck and put the blame entirely on the students. They approved the protest and letter trying to shy away when issues got out of hand,” a student leader said.  

 The student leaders call on the National Executive Council to immediately suspend the UPNG council and the vice-chancellor for not showing any leadership and effort to resolve the issues.   They added that a care-taker vice-chancellor should be appointed to administer the reconciliation process and get the students back to class.