Daily Dispatch
Student nurses miss the point
IT MIGHT be fun to clap and dance down the streets as a merry group of protesters, but unless University of Fort Hare nursing students get very serious very quickly about doing what they are supposed to do they will individually project themselves into the larger but far less happy group of the unemployed.
If that happens these same students, who were fortunate to go to university while many were not, will have blown the mountain of money sacrificed by their parents and taxpayers. They may also have blown their single chance of acquiring a skill that would enable them to contribute meaningfully to our society and give them a ticket to working in other parts of the world.
It is fairly easy to see what is behind the students skipping lectures and practicals. for going on three weeks. By their own admission some had not completed their clinical and attendance hours.
That the acting head of department, Ntombana Rala, apparently raised this with them and pointed to consequences, was not to their liking and resulted in the accusations that she was “running the department like her own farm”. Also the boycott.
In the process some students have gone exceeded the boundaries of peaceful protest, trying to stop students from other disciplines from attending class and also damaging university property. Thus they have been suspended. The misguided rationale now appears to be that the only way forward for those who have landed themselves in trouble is to ensure the continuation of a groundless protest, thereby pulling down as many with them as is possible.
The university management has already accommodated students after they complained Rala was “victimising” them. Although an investigation found the complaints to be groundless, Rala was moved to work with post-graduate students.
The management is now standing its ground, correctly so. Anything else would signal to students that the professional workplace has no standards, deadlines or requirements for individual responsibility, but is a free-for-all where instant gratification is a right.
Ironically, in the same edition of the Dispatch we also reported that the Eastern Cape health department intended hiring 500 new nurses. This presents a magnificent opportunity in an extremely harsh jobs environment for those students who qualify.
It is no secret that jobs in the Eastern Cape are being shed faster than they are being created. In fact, yesterday we also cited statistics from the outgoing Statistician-General Pali Lehohla showing that 326 000 people had relocated from this province in the past five years – the biggest exodus from any province in the country. Most of these people left looking for work. Students need to realise that when education costs are at a premium and universities are maxed out, the chance to study is a privilege – to be grasped wholeheartedly. Further the value of tertiary study comes through putting in the hard yards. At such times, a rigorous academic who invests effort in the progress of students, is in fact, their best friend.