Making rounds on Facebook, and even news reports last week, Queen’s College has been thrown into the public eye for something quite uncharacteristic of the school: a protest.
Students were photographed and videoed marching and holding placards with slogans such as “Agree for Agri”, “Less land, less food, less life”, and “Agri lives matter”. This whole debacle arose due to the fact that the school’s administration announced the Ministry’s plans to build a cafeteria.
How could something so simple cause so much controversy you ask? Well, the answer lies in where the cafeteria was proposed to be built. In what appears to be an oversight, the cafeteria was slated to be constructed on a piece of land that extended about eight to 10 feet into the school’s Agricultural Science plot. This enraged the teachers of the subject, since they said they had not been given much notice of this plan, and that it would affect the students greatly.
By infringing upon the land of the Agricultural Science plot, beds, which were being prepared by students in for their CXC examinations, would be destroyed, and the main entrance to the plot for heavy materials would be blocked. The teachers bemoaned that the already tight pressed plot was losing even more space, and that this was unacceptable. Additionally, a relatively new water trestle would be demolished.
On Monday of this week, construction began, and so in protest, Ms Ogle, the Head of Department of Agricultural Science, sat in front of the fence so as to disrupt progress. She impressed that the destruction of the plot was unfair, and that if plans were in place for the students to be relocated, they should be enacted immediately. Not much long after, Agricultural Science students especially those from the Fifth Form, who are writing their CSEC examinations next year, came out to join their teacher.
Protests only escalated throughout the week, reaching a pinnacle when construction workers began to fill up drains. Inflamed, scores of students used their lunch period to protest the continuation of the work. They surrounded trees that needed to be cut down, and marched in circles wielding placards. Some students even began to dig out the sand from the drains, which had been filled.
Some other issues with the cafeteria that students cited were its proximity to a chicken pen; making it was unsanitary; and that the estimated cost was far too much. They believed that the school did not need another cafeteria and that the money could be put to better use. The school would have indicated that the old cafeteria would be converted to a stationary store. Following the protests, the Agricultural Science plot has been taken in at the side, but expanded to the front. Hopefully this appeases everyone.
Thoughts on the protest have been mixed. Many old Queen’s College students have expressed pride in the students for standing up for their rights, while others have reservations as they found a protest to be unnecessary. Nevertheless, to me it shows that the students will not be silent on matters that affect them. This, I believe is a good quality, and even if a protest was a little on the dramatic side, it accomplished the desired change.
