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Following the publication of an opinion article by UCT student Matthew Field, a lecturer at the university, who has asked to remain anonymous, has written to News24 with their concerns about the student protest at the institution.
It is disappointing that, yet again, we are confronted with an utterly chaotic start to the academic year at UCT. The disruption for our first-year cohort is especially upsetting.
The vast majority of our new students are still teenagers. Often, this is their first time away from home, and they lack a support network in their new environment. The university is meant to be a refuge for them, a safe space and welcoming environment to help guide them through a big transition in their lives. And yet, on Thursday morning, shortly before our first lecture was supposed to begin, I received panicked emails from confused students about what to do. There was little communication from management beyond tweeting that "UCT operations are scheduled to proceed as planned".
READ | OPINION: Matthew Field- UCT protest action - It has become groundhog day
Lecturers and students were blocked from coming onto campus, so clearly, it was not going to be possible to continue as scheduled. Any lecturer who has been at UCT for the past eight years is used to disruption to our teaching schedule. We have had to learn how to be flexible with our curriculum and adapt it to protests, fires or pandemics, but our first-year students are left feeling confused, demoralised and worried when these shutdowns happen.
You would think that by now, we could anticipate the disruptions enough to communicate contingency plans to students and avoid the anxiety that accompanies cars and people piling up outside the gates of UCT on the first day of term.
Even by late Monday afternoon, we had not been given any guidance about parameters for taking our classes online (during Covid, our classes were meant to be asynchronous and require low data).
There should have been clear plans and guidelines in place and they should have been communicated weeks ago. Now we must sit and wait to hear how to proceed while our first-year students are left in the dark, confused and worried about falling behind.
-A concerned UCT lecturer.
