UCT today and exams

22 October 2015

The situation at the University of Cape Town and on all the country’s campuses is critical and without precedent. It calls for unprecedented action. The objective must be to ensure access to higher education. In the short term:

We will be meeting the President and his Ministers in Pretoria tomorrow and will demand decisive State intervention to ensure that students in need do not face a fee increase in 2016;

I have postponed the set of university examinations that was due to start on 27 October 2015. There will thus be no exams next week. We will set a new date for exams in consultation with staff and students. (Where a departmentally arranged exam was to have been held at an earlier date arrangements will be made for those who did not arrive for such exams to write the exam at a later date.)

The UCT Council will meet this weekend, after the meeting with the President and his Ministers and I will put to it proposals aimed at ensuring that: students in need do not face a fee increase in 2016; and that UCT’s comprehensive financial aid package for students in need remains in place.

I have decided that the University will remain closed tomorrow, 23 October 2015, and we will hold an open forum for members of the University in the morning.

I appeal to the State to act with restraint. I subscribe fully to the statement of the President of Convocation, Professor Barney Pityana, who made the point this morning that there can be no justification for the excessive use of force of the kind that was witnessed on television on 21 October 2015. As he put it: this brought shame to every South African. (Professor Pityana’s full statement is available on www.uct.ac.za.)

Statement issued by Dr Max Price, UCT Vice-Chancellor, 22 October 2015