I can’t recall seeing Sherod Duncan in the protest but

May 25, 2014 Letters

---

Dear Editor,
I refer readers to a letter in the Friday, May 23, 2014 edition of KN captioned. “Freddie, the UGWU never supported us in the Struggle.” His missive is in response to my Thursday last column in which I outlined a historical picture of law students’ avoidance of protest at UG.
Mr. Duncan replied to say that under his leadership, when he was a communications major, the student union did engage in protest action and he gave examples. Mr. Duncan knows my daughter who is his colleague at UG, therefore he can ask her what I have said to her about Mr. Duncan several times over the dinner table
In discussing student politics with her, I have said to her that my personal friend Jason Benjamin was the most popular student leader UG produced but Jason never lead a picket demonstration or engaged the students in protest, but Sherod Duncan did. I will take it to mean that Duncan is a decent person and would not think that I would mention my daughter in a matter in which I lied. Let me repeat; I have told my daughter this story several times and I went into details. Mr. Duncan did lock the outer door leading to the office of the Vice Chancellor as a form of protest.
Mr. Duncan’s point does not vitiate the integrity of my argument since I specify law students and his protest took place when he was a communications major. As to the protest on campus when I was dismissed from UG on January 18 2012, I know Mr. Duncan was sympathetic. But truly I cannot recall seeing Mr. Duncan in any of the picket exercises that lasted for almost two weeks. I want to make it clear that I am not saying he wasn’t there but I honestly can’t recall seeing him. But it doesn’t matter if he was there or not. Mr. Duncan I am sure, given what I know of him, would have been indignant about my dismissal. In my opinion, Mr. Duncan was a concerned student leader
In comparing him with Jason Benjamin, I would say that Benjamin certainly spoke up far more on violations on campus at meetings of the Council of the University of which I was a member. Benjamin’s activism also extended beyond UG. He marched one year with the UGWU on May Day and through his role as a coast guard with the army, free meals were supplied to UGWU marchers on that May Day rally. I should clear the air for readers in that Duncan was not the student leader at the time of my dismissal; it was Dwayne Benjamin. Benjamin was quite active in the protest.
Mr. Duncan pointed out that my union agreed to help his union in calling for civil disobedience across the campus but we failed to act. This is not exactly correct. Our position in the union was that when there was a violation on campus, the respective union would initiate action and other stakeholders would show solidarity. In the situation where Duncan advocated civil disobedience, there was no action by the students only the isolated bravery of Duncan and few of his colleagues in the student leadership
Surely, it would have been a bizarre process, not to mention the immense national embarrassment, for the student union to call for massive protest at UG and only the non-academic staff turned up with their pickets and padlocks. Mr. Duncan is honest enough to admit that the students did not come out. They hardly do. Only once, and that was in 1995 that began when the Sociology 100 lecturer tore up all the submitted essays of his students and one thing led to another. Not before 1995 not after. Not even with the Yohance Douglas (Douglas and other UG students were shot by the police) murder by the police. Those streets protests against the Douglas killings were led by citizens and politicians and members of civil society but not UG students.
It need not be mentioned here because all Guyanese know that there isn’t another university anywhere in the world, not even in Cuba or a despotic Arab state, not even in Iran, where the students are as morbidly apathetic as UG students. The UG student sheepishness is definitely pathological and sickening.
There are super-rich students in many American and European university that tomorrow will quickly take to the streets and confront even policemen over wrongs committed at their university. In this connection, I would ask readers to read my column today in which an author makes a powerful case for the connection between genes and race. Some races do better he argues because of  the process of natural selection and adaptation as spelt out in evolutionary biology pioneered by Charles Darwin.
Finally, for reasons he may want to explain at a later date, nowhere in his letter did he agree that the focus should now be for law students to pressure the Government of Guyana in having our own law school or reinstitute Guyana’s stipend to the Council for Legal Education. When cowardly law students become lawyers can they really have a good grasp on the difference between right and wrong? I don’t think so. Sheep cannot tell the difference. They never will.
Frederick Kissoon   

---

---