The preponderance of outbursts of anti.- Fourah Bay College feelings especially following the unfortunate acts of vandalism in the aftermath of their Student Union Elections need not continue especially as the university to a very large extent is a microcosm of the entire Sierra Leone community.
It is rather disheartening to learn that even as at now when students are looking forward to preparing for their exams there are apprehensions over their going into residence in time. The issue is that repairs on the hostels are being done. According to the student leaders it has taken about four months to refurbish only one hostel. This snail pace may spell academic disaster in an era replete with exam failures.
Most people down town are angry that students resorted to damaging their own hostels…yes this is granted but we need to dig deeper into the root causes. Solving problems inside the box will do us no good. We need to go outside the box and start asking series of but why questions. Sometimes it is not so much what is done, but how it is done.
You cannot say because your father died by road accident you will never sit in a vehicle. So the argument that students should not complain because they caused the damages themselves. It is difficult to say but the reality today is that like the rest of the youth they need some pampering if you see what I mean. For goodness sake if not for God’s sake every generation has to go through the peculiarities of its generation. Just go down memory lane.
Take the 1970s and their miniskirts and compare it to the tight stretch jean trousers worn today by our women young and old.
What we need to know today is that with the technological advancement our young people know so much what obtains outside and are sure to compare themselves to their colleague students in other countries. You take a look at Legon University in Ghana.
Fourah Bay College has come a long way over the years from Mabang where a one time principal of Fourah Bay College used to be a prefect in charge of distributing kerosene to students for their lamp, to today when the College has a Mass Communication Department and runs its own FM station.
Believe it or you leave it in far off days people actually went to school to learn the western ways and thus become almost strangers in their own land.
Fourah Bay College was seen as a separate world altogether. What rubbed this notion thickly in was the placing of the College atop Mount Aureol giving it a towering symbolism. If you care for history the college moved from Fourah Bay, Cline Town where you have College Road.
Now what are some of the factors for the decline? The foremost that comes to mind is the drop in government support due to economic squeeze especially in the days of the so called structural adjustment program. There used to be Government Scholarship which was a full bursary. This meant that if you were lucky to have the scholarship, Government took care of tuition, meals, allowance and some money for books you could pick up from the college bookshop! The big challenge at the time was facing the interview panel. In those days you had to be well dressed preferably in the Western style. At that time everything was so centralized that people from as far as Bomaru and Mongo Bendugu had to come to New England Ville to take the interview… I am talking about the late 1970s and early 1980s. You had the option to pay your college fees ahead so that you are sure to go to college that year.
One other area that was changed that turned out to be a mere nightmare is government and college authorities relieving themselves of the responsibility of feeding students. I can remember around 1984 the idea of the cafeteria came up. It was a novelty that students who had traveled to other universities abroad lauded as a modern development. So although some few students were apprehensive the bulk of the students bought the idea.
This author at the time was Minister of Public Relations and also ran a student Press…Buffalo Press. One most memorable of articles he wrote on the cafeteria system then was one titled The metamorphosis of the Cafetaria. When it was first established patronage was high but soon cash ran out for many students.
So the next stage was what I called creditaria, because students started eating on credit. When the amounts went that high students began eating food prepared under the mango trees under questionable conditions…I called this mangotaria. Well the highest stage was when students could no longer pay their debts or buy cheap food from under the mango trees so they resorted to going down town by the canal and pretending they were going to eat at home…that I called sparrowtaria. In those days the word sparrow meant leaving campus for down town because you cannot afford the cost of an event, just like the bird sparrows leave the Scandinavian countries at a particular season and migrate to West Africa and then go back when the weather is favorable.
Before the Blackman Whiteman phenomenon swallowed Fourah Bay College student union politics was quite peaceful…it blew hot and cold.
That is when a particular government was not radical enough, at the end of its term another is elected to give students the pep it wanted. Those days were the one party days and students were perhaps the only opposition to the APC. The general feelings at the time were mainly anti government. The government was referred to as Babylon and foremost reggae artists like Bob Marley became very popular among students.
Indeed things have changed a lot not only at FBC but the country as a whole. The College needs support by all stake holders – Government, College Administration, Lecturers, Civil society parents and corporate bodies. An investment in students is an investment in the countries future. As they say a country’s future is known by the provision it makes for its children and youth.
We have to sum up the courage to pamper students a little…remember they are part of the youth population that every body agrees should be catered for. With the current unemployment crunch we can ill afford to taunt or antagonize our youth. Think hard on this…it could well be the beginning of your attitudinal change for the better.
By S. Beny SAM
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