Mid this year, around July or thereabouts, the nation was awash with news pertaining the greatest University in the land, the gist of the news? ‘Revival of sanity.’ The University Council, the highest governing authority at Makerere had passed policies aimed at restoring morality at the proverbial Havard of Africa. Signed by University Council chairperson; Etyem and promptly gazetted, the rules among others, banned alcoholic drinks and any such drinks capable of causing intoxication, banned any form of sexual immorality including but not limited to indecent dressing and vulgarity in speech and deed. In addition, roguish acts of wanton vandalism and hooliganism definitive of strikes were declared illegal.
Regardless of the well articulated social media protests, the university administration stuck to their guns. Seven weeks down the road. We seek to weigh the potency of these rules and any visible signs of positivity, if any, naturally arising from the rules.
Last week, Monday and Wednesday; violent strikes broke out at Makerere University culminating into the loss of property. The strike was orchestrated by the very students of Makerere against whom the rules of sanity were enacted. Wanton acts of hooliganism and vandalism were reported. For instance, the Africa hall cafeteria which serves up to 700 residents from Livingston and Africa Halls of residence was looted under broad day light. Tyres were set alight, songs of the most vulgar kind were sang loudly, proudly and openly.
A week prior, Kale Kayihura was hosted at the Freedom square, during a security sensitisation event. After the singing of the national anthem, the Lumumba hall anthem was sung, it is to be noted that this particular anthem consists of the most abominable of wishes and sexually graphic content.
Doesn’t the new policy cover; hooliganism, vulgarity and immorality? Read on.
At the beginning of the semester, hall canteens were hesitant to sell liquor as the rules appeared to bite. Today liquor is sold openly. Bottles holding alcoholic content are adjacent to bread and cakes.
With regard to sexual immorality, Health ministers in various halls have continued to distribute condoms in the condom dispensers. The same disappear within hours…it’s is on record that girls and boys related by neither blood nor business spend nights together, beds creak in rhythm to the unison movement of parties. It doesn’t invite the summoning of extraordinary intelligence to knit the pieces together, and spell; FORNICATION. The condoms are incidentally supplied by the university. The university doesn’t by some miraculous chance think condoms are balloons, does it?
Every Friday evening, girls don low cut- cleavage revealing tank tops and tight dresses, short enough to make a priest’s blood boil. But again decency is relative. What’s the benchmark for determining indecency? Wouldn’t that summon the employment of biased notions of subjectivity?
A policeman hired to restore morality might say;
‘ Hey girl, your dress makes my mind go zig zag, it surely is indecent, I think your promoting immorality, you’re under arrest.’
The girl shall retort; ‘I don’t feel indecent, I feel decent enough to go to church.’
Would you trust a man easily inflamed with desire with such a task as arresting indecent girls, why wouldn’t he permit the girls walk free if they agreed to show him more cleavage? It is foolhardy to make Dracula the store keeper of a blood bank and turn around and blame him for inefficiency.
Clearly some policies are paper tigers. They crumble when reality dares them. Such rules like;
‘Thou shan’t drink.’
A little truck filled with liquor bottles snakes its way along university streets to male halls of residence. Every evening students sit within their halls of residence pour libation to the incompetence of policies, drink some beer, and drink some more beer or tot packs and get drunk and riot and make female genitalia the chorus and verses of their songs. And life goes on.
The University administration is silent, the rules stand idle and serve no purpose like a Post office telephone line in an up-country suburb. Ultimately the university offered lip service, the university wasted precious ink, university imagines that the rules as morally binding as they will self detonate when students breach them. The University naively believes it has enacted rules that will restore sanity and as a result, hooliganism will fly out the window in fright. How supremely misplaced a belief! When probed earlier, the university PRO, Ritah Namisango chose to ignore her phone.
But again, it is absurd that some people believed the rules would work, how do rules against sexual morality work yet marks go up every time a student’s pair of undies go down? Call them sexually genetic marks! There’s no mechanism whatsoever to enforce these rules, the moralistic nature of the rules make their implementation difficult.
‘Will the university council morality brigade break down, ones door in bid to search one’s room for drugs? Or if there’s a woman under one’s duvet? Wouldn’t that breach one’s constitutionally entrenched right to privacy in Art; 27(2) which reads.
‘No person shall be subjected to interference with the privacy of that person’s home…’
I’d in good faith implore the university to work upon the failing street lights, save life and appreciate the notion of following up resolutions made and enforcing policies. Instead of going on wild goose chases.
At the end of the day lots of fees are paid to legal draftsmen for rules that will neither hurt a fly nor catch one. Morality is dead, long live morality!
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