The Old Vandals Association, alumni of the Commonwealth Hall of University of Ghana (UG), says it is worried about “culture of silence” on UG campus.
The Association claimed the University’s administration was promoting tyranny, autocracy and administrative arbitrariness at the heart of decision-making on campus.
It said this at a press briefing in Accra.
Mr Isaac Nketiah Sarpong, National President of the Association, said the happenings were deliberate attempts by the University’s administration to suppress students’ rights and opposition.
He stressed that the voices of students through NUGS, SRC, and JCR systems that hitherto served as incubation centres for national leaders had now been rendered moribund.
“In order to achieve the long-standing intention of immobilising student-activism, the University Management introduced a policy targeted at dismembering the Commonwealth Hall by sacking all students from the hall at the start of the 2022/2023 academic year.”
“The said policy was ostensibly premised on the so-called clashes involving students of the Commonwealth Hall and the Mensah-Sarbah Hall,” he added.
Mr Sarpong said the management had disregarded court orders that stopped it from implementing the policy.
He added that last year, 17 students of the Hall were arrested and brutalised by the Police at the invitation of the University’s administration allegedly when the students tried to enter the Hall following a court order.
Mr Sarpong said those unwarranted actions, including brutalities visited on students during a peaceful vigil in honour of a colleagues on June 30 this year, were deepening anxiety and fear on campus.
He added that an accommodation project the Assoociation was embarking on for students dubbed the Vandal City Annex Project had been stalled due to “impediments” placed in the way by the University’s administration.
