By Joseph Lamin Kamara
On Saturday 800 students graduated from Fourah Bay College (FBC), a constituent of the University of Sierra Leone. The ceremony was held at the historic Ajayi Crowther amphitheatre.
Before the Ebola outbreak congregations lasted for about four or more hours, graduands would shake hands with the Chancellor or the Vice-Chancellor and Principal. But before last Saturday’s programme was declared open by Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Professor Ekundayo Jonathan David Thompson, the University Deputy Marshal, Solomon Fofana, announced that the ceremony would not last for more than two hours. He added that the graduands would also not shake hands with the Vice Chancellor who presided over the ceremony in the absence of President Ernest Bai Koroma, who is the Chancellor.
The deputy Marshal also said all the graduands of a particular faculty were to stand and remain so as their names were called out until their entire faculty was complete.
By 10:40 am the 800 graduands had started being admitted to their degrees. While that was happening, medics were seen at the main entrances with the most popular outdoor medical equipment,the hand held infrared thermometers, checking the temperatures of both guests and graduands. Drums of chlorinated water were also at the immediate entrances where people were required to wash their hands, though many went in without following that Ebola preventive measure.
By 11:40 the University orator, Raymond De Souza George, had been summoned to give the vote of thanks. Graduates and their relatives had already risen, some leaving.
The Ebola outbreak limited the ceremony greatly and the authorities were seen applying genuine efforts to follow the emergency measures in place to curb transmission of the deadly virus.
The ban on public gathering, temperature checks, regular hand-washing among others are measures government long put in place, but since schools and colleges were reopened, absolute safety from Ebola, which is still in some parts of the country amidst massive international intervention, is no longer guaranteed in the learning institutions.
Besides escaping handwashing and temperature checks, sick people can even win over thermometers.
“People can take analgesics to reduce their temperatures,” DrBrimaBobson Sesay, one of the medics at the graduation Ebola screening team told Politico.
That way, Dr. Sesay advised, one could use the thermometers on sick people without detecting abnormality. In addition, DrBobson Sesay, who was also officially deployed to the Lungi Airport Ebola screening team, said even the thermometers could malfunction, which caused them to check repeatedly a person’s temperature when they discovered it had gone beyond 36.4. That, he said,was considered the limit of a normal temperature.
Nevertheless, there was no alarm over an Ebola suspected case at the ceremony.
The Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) is receding, as Professor Thompson noted at the ceremony, but it has hampered the intellectual capacity of the University.
“As a University, we have been affected by the loss of faculty [members] and staff who were at the frontline in the fight against Ebola. Several doctors and nurses, former faculty and staff of the College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences (COMAHS), succumbed to the disease,” he said with some solemnity, paused for a while and entreated the gathering to spare a moment for the dead.
He noted that doctors Sheik Umar Khan, Thomas Rogers, Martin Salia and Victor Willoughby, who died fighting Ebola, had all been members of the faculty of COMAHS. The University principal also said many of the other medical doctors, including a female, Olivet Buck, who had died of the disease, had been graduates of COMAHS.
The Saturday graduation, which many people have said was unprecedented in the country, could not be damned absolutely by even the graduands. But the most historic aspect of shaking hands with the Chancellor or the Vice-Chancellor, in which a specimen of a graduand’s qualification is issued, was truly missed by the FBC graduands.
“I would have loved to shake hands with the Vice-Chancellor, but I accept it as it is,” Lieutenant Colonel Albert Bockarie told Politico after the conferment.
Colonel Bockarie is a member of the Sierra Leone Armed Forces and was graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in French. He, however, noted that as long as his degree had been conferred on him, it did not really make a difference not shaking the hands of the Principal.
Isatu Deen Cole, who was graduating with a BA in History and Sociology, was more frustrated because she did not shake hands with the Vice-Chancellor or receive a specimen of her degree.
“I feel bad because I did not shake hands with the Vice-Chancellor,” she complained
Ms. Cole was also disappointed that her graduation was a short one and that the authorities "are too strict in maintaining [Ebola] emergency measures."
She said: “I hope to have a get-together in [my] Church because that’s where I can have a free hall, to at least appreciate God.”
Due to the growing student population of the University, in the past few years, the graduation has been divided so that each of the three constituent colleges or a major division of the university population can have a less populated congregation.
The Institute for Public Administration and Management (IPAM) will graduate its own students next Saturday, May 9. The total number of students that will be graduating from IPAM is not yet known, but the graduands will be in their hundreds.
A date for COMAHS is yet to be set, as the Ebola outbreak has taken a huge toll on that college. Since the virus broke out, many of COMAHS’ lecturers and final year students have been deployed to help eradicate it.
Schools and colleges were reopened last month. The university is already in the 2014/2015 academic session with only about five months left, that is, if next session will not be affected too. But the authorities said earlier, while preparing to reopen, that since the academic year would be short, the current session would be compact, with continuous academic exercises and with almost no break.
© Politico 05/05/15
