All quiet on the university front

ANT KATZ

Parents, students, scholars, university staff, faculty and management… are still holding their breath, should there this year be a repeat of last year’s violence. So far so good.

Would campuses be safer spaces this year? Would militants in the name of academic freedom  be allowed back into the same places and communities that they vandalised last November?

However, when most of the country’s 17 public universities opened on Monday, there was nary an incident. Both Wits and UCT ended on a high note – reporting very successful results in 2016.

“Who knows what the next couple of weeks will bring?” David Rozen of Pretoria told Jewish Report on Sunday. David and his wife, Lore Dana, are the parents of University of Pretoria (Tuks) student Gary Rozen, who last year found himself under “a lot of pressure”.

“Tuks closed for three weeks and we weren’t sure if he would be able to write exams,” said father David. This Monday, their younger son, Zach, started his first year.

The Rozens have nothing but praise for Tuks’ management of the “student uprisings” last November But they have clearly discussed their dilemma at length and the boys have plans to do their post-graduate studies abroad.

But the potential of renewed student unrest remains the elephant in the room.

Wits Vice-Chancellor Professor Adam Habib, told the 6 500 first-year students at their “Welcome Day” last week that, “while Wits supports the rights of students to peaceful protest, these protests should not violate the rights of those who wish to work and learn”.

Habib told Jewish Report on Tuesday that he did not anticipate any protests at this stage, “given the number of concessions that we have made to enable the majority of students to register”. “However, should any protests develop, we have contingency plans in place to ensure that the academic programme continues unhindered.”

Habib told his new students that it pleased him that “Wits students are active social citizens and they leave their mark on society,” pointing out that the #FeesMustFall campaign was started by Wits students.

This, said Habib, had achieved the goal of bringing to government’s attention “the underfunding of universities by government over the last two decades”. In 10 days, he said, “the students placed student funding on the national agenda – a feat that vice-chancellors had been unable to achieve over 10 years”.

Another issue that has troubled university communities is the question of “troublemakers” who were denied access to campus last year.

At UCT, Max Price sits vice-chancellor, says that his university is putting the final touches to a new structure to deal with these individual cases (of unrest) in future. He agrees that some of what he calls the “disruptors” against whom UCT “obtained interdicts” and even expelled some for criminal activities last year, “became the centre of conflict”.

In the end, he says, “we had to weigh up not finishing the academic year and losing exams for 20 000 students, against dropping the disciplinary cases”. The cases were dropped.

Prof Habib told Jewish Report that Wits “is dealing with each student matter individually, in line with the university’s policies and processes”.

Rafi Friedman, who completed an honours degree at Wits last year, says there is an expectation among students that there will be “some sort of trouble” on campuses this year – but much less of it.

He remains upbeat that the authorities can turn things around in the next year or two because “they have to!” He believes the momentum of the #FeesMustFall) movement has broken down somewhat.

“I know of people in grades 10 and 11 who are doing two or three A-level subjects rather than continuing with their IEB (local) matric” and others who are availing themselves of the option to write the American SAT exams through self-study.

Private universities in South Africa (such as Boston) are proliferating and offering degree courses backed by the University of South Africa (Unisa) – which would otherwise have been a home-study option.

However, says Rafi, a degree from a private university still doesn’t compare to Wits or UCT when competing in the job market.

The free high school in Israel Programme, Na’ale, is booming with10 South Africans having gone over to complete their high school there in the past 10 months.

It seems that, in general, Jewish students and parents are remaining loyal to public universities – while discussing back-up plans and alternatives if the SA public university system were to break down.

As far as the SA Union of Jewish Students is concerned, Dean Weil, the newly-elected chairman of Wits SAUJS told Jewish Report that there had been no signs of anything untoward on the Wits campus on the first day of study this Monday.

Last week’s orientation week had gone well, he said, although the university’s computer had had a glitch and so they are still processing the numbers of members who had signed up. He expects them to be high.

“O-week (Orientation Week) was a great success,” he said.” We changed the way we interacted with new students this year by asking them what they would be looking to us for – as an organisation – and we have been following up with them telephonically.”

SAUJS campus committees and their national executive are going on a hadracha weekend to meet together and plan for the year ahead, says Weil. As UCT only opens next month, an interim committee has been formed and they will be participating.

Some of the students’ big-ticket issues have been solved. Others can easily be solved if there are open-minded stakeholders around the bargaining table. Still others will be more difficult and take more time.

But, on the fringe, are the noisiest “student” demands that emanate from political groupings looking to be disruptive. These demands are unrealistic (like, for example, free education for all) and cannot be solved. Both Dr Price and Prof Habib are adopting a take-no-prisoners approach to these issues.