YCLSA OPPOSES THE INCREASING OF ADMISSION POINTS AT UFS
The Young Communist League of South Africa (ufasimba) vehemently opposes the innovative ways by the UFS to further exclude black students from being admitted in the institution. The UFS has recently announced that the points required to gain admission to the university will increase from 28 to 30 for first time entrants. We believe that the point system used by universities is inconsistent and has been a tool to ostracize students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
We are further shocked that Professor Jansen Jonathan who at some point was labeled as "one of our own" is administering this clearly racist access policy, when we had hoped that he would be about change and open gates for the historically excluded.
The point system does not take into consideration that students from privileged schools have more subject options as opposed to schools in disadvantaged communities. The point system and the number of points one needs is applicable regardless of how many subjects a student has. A student can have only six subjects and still be required to meet the same requirements with someone who has 11 subjects.
Subjects for example such as music are not offered in disadvantaged communities whereas in private school there is an entourage of subjects offered where students can easily meet stringent requirements set out for entry. This in the YCLSA' view is a creation of a white elephant in UFS and affirms that the institution will forever be white.
The institution created a mockery of a 12 month programme which was allegedly there to assist students from disadvantaged communities, instead this programme prolongs the number of years which students study and moreover it increases the already high costs of tuition and expenses of staying in university.
We call upon the Minister of higher education to urgently intervene with the matter and come up with a uniformed point system which will be applicable nationally otherwise all the gains that have been made will be reversed if institutions of higher learning continue to operate in isolation of our national programmes.
Should this point system be implemented we will fight tooth and nail for its scrapping and mobilize our structures including the PYA to do away with racial tactics policies in institutions of Higher learning
Statement issued by the YCLSA Head office, July 28 2010
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