Students at the university of The Gambia, after a futile discussion with the university’s administration for the cancellation or extension of their end of semester examination plan to stage a protest on Friday at the Kanifing’s peace building. The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic poised the only state university to embrace online lectures in other to curb it’s further spread.

The utg task force on Tuesday hosted a google meet discussion with both the students, and the students’ union executive in finding ways of resolving the matter at hand.

Many of the students disgruntled over the ineffectiveness of online classes, lamenting that they are faced with many obstacles.

Poor internet connectivity, late allocation of data from the university amongst many other hurdles faced by the general student body.

Fatoumatta Bondi, a third year law student said, she has missed her classes on several times due to bad network.

“The problem that am faced with during the online class was network, my network is really poor. Most of the times when I am in class, I get off class because of my network, this has happened a lot of times and it has made me missed a lot of classes,” she stressed.

Bondi solicits for the university administration to extend the date of examination till July or so.

The rather unusual nature of the online lectures made many students dormant towards adjusting; in fact a couple of students had differed the semester while some dropped few courses to lessen the burden.

Binta fatty, a third year first semester student from the school of journalism and digital media said, she was happy from the beginning expecting that the online class will be a substitute for the continuation of lectures.

“In the beginning, I thought it will be something good because we will be engaged in academic activities but to my surprise it did not went well with me. I have never had even a single lectures in some of my courses, all that the lecturer does is to send us notes to read for exams,” she explained.

Fatty further added that, she is not in for the cancellation of exam. She would rather prefer for a continuous assessment or for an extension.

The university online courses started few weeks ago,  following the declaration of the first state of public emergency. Although, some students had it fitting not to have to run from one campus to another to attend lectures thereby being late or missing classes. However, majority are in total denial of the fruitfulness of it.

By: Sohna Tunkara

For Kairaba News Network