Even if UG could – is this the VC’s personal decision?

Dear Editor,
As a long-standing observer of the University of Guyana, being a past student and faculty member several years retired, I cannot help but add my voice to Dr Mark Kirton’s and those of several people writing on social media, newspapers, and commenting in high circles about the matter of Honorary Degrees at the University of Guyana.
The response of the University of Guyana’s Public Relations Officer, Ms Paulette Paul, who should know better, is deliberately misleading and untruthful in many parts.
She should know better than to try to pull wool over the eyes of the tax paying Guyanese public, who have a right to seek answers and to ask questions, since their dollars fund this University.
1. The Vice Chancellor cannot, and should not, announce that he is going to confer any degree, academic of otherwise, upon anyone, since he is not able to do this without a due process, whether or not the University Act says the University can confer degrees.
The fact is that neither the Council nor the Academic Board has seen a proposal or request from the Vice Chancellor for them to consider the granting of honorary degrees.
2. It is the practice of this Vice Chancellor, and the Council seems none the wiser, to make critical and far-reaching decisions which fall solely in the purview of this Council or other bodies, and to bring these to the Council for ratification. He has done this with appointments of his many and growing Cabinet, new appointments, renewal of contracts for high officials, and even with payments of millions in lieu of leave. When asked for details, he sometimes rants that “either people trust him or they don’t”. With a University in close to $500 million deficit, accountability cannot be reduced to trusting an individual. This is a national strategic asset, and it must be treated as such.   The new and mostly very young Council must not allow this to continue. Had they been allowed to fulfill their oversight roles, the World would not be hearing that the VC, Prof Griffith (I am that I am), is conferring anything when no  authority has sanctioned this yet.
3. While UG is legally able to confer honorary and other academic degrees, the big question is whether at this time it should; and if it should, by what procedure, and what conditions need to apply. It can also award honorary medals of different kinds and other degrees, but there must be a system, and it cannot be that the authority to do this is arrogated to the bow-tied one who thinks that he can use the media in his campaign of personal pomposity. UG is the national University, not the personal fiefdom of one man and his cronies.
At least the media is doing the job of asking the hard questions, if no one else will.
Let’s do the right thing by the right means, and let the UG Council do its job in service of this nation.

Sincerely,
Name withheld