A little about me

Do not worry when you are not recognised, but strive to be worthy of recognition — Abraham Lincoln. Finding a useful issue or topic to discuss every week is not an easy task and sometimes one goes blank, although there is no dearth of areas to write about.

Indeed, one question that I have regularly asked my graduate students at the University of Education, Winneba to answer is that Features can be found anywhere and everywhere.” The annual variation to this question is in the form of explain, discuss, analyse and examine or, do you agree.

It is in that regard that in the face of a dearth of issues to be discussed, I want to share a little about me, particularly two leadership challenges I faced as president of the Commonwealth Hall Junior Common Room.

Until I became president of the JCR, I was noted to be one of those who refused to join the queue in an orderly manner and wait for my turn to be served food at the canteen. Probably those who saw my election as an opportunity to stem charging, as the practice of jumping the queue was referred to, brought up the issue at a JCR meeting and a resolution was passed to ban charging.

With the first challenge, one afternoon I was monitoring the queue when one guy attempted to charge, thereupon I asked him to stop. Furiously, he barked at me and asked “Who are you to stop me from charging?” I told him that if he was a man, he should charg, and when he attempted to defy my directive and move forward, I slapped him and he was carried away and ponded.

When he stepped out of the pond, he teamed up with some of his mates to galvanise support for an emergency meeting to impeach me for slapping him but he could not get the number to effect an emergency meeting. But that incident marked the end of charging for as long as I remained the JCR president. This is how it worked, anytime a student attempted to charge, there would be a shout,”Ayebee is coming,” and that restored order.

In the other incident, the university authorities proposed the introduction of canteen coupons as a way of ensuring that every student got food from their hall canteens. The various JCRs were to discuss the matter and enable the Students Representative Council make a decision. The convention then was that decisions of the SRC were based on support from majority of the halls. There were five halls, Legon, Akuafo, Mensah Sarbah, Commonwealth and Volta.

At the JCR meetings, only Commonwealth Hall opposed the proposal. It ,therefore, meant that the decision had to be implemented with an overwhelming support. However, there were a few elements within Commonwealth who decided this time not to respect the time tested practice of following majority decision. They refused to purchase the food coupons which were sold once in the week on Fridays. They planned that they would force their way to the canteen on Saturday and if they were refused to be served, they would create mayhem and invade the kitchen.

On the evening of the first Friday when the coupons sale was introduced, we organised an emergency JCR meeting where a resolution was passed to the effect that anybody who did not have food coupon should not make an attempt to go to the canteen from the next day. It was made clear that anyone who went there would not be served food and that those who would resort to violence would not be protected by the JCR.

Although the anti-coupons agitators tried to undermine the meeting, which run from 9 p.m. to about 2 a.m. by resorting to all manner of technicalities,especially by the law students, leadership persevered and steered the meeting by rebutting every matter raised, some on pointless points of order or an unknown points of correction, to protect the interest of the majority who were solidly behind the decision.

Copies of the resolution were pasted on all entrances to the blocks. The next morning, it was observed that unprintable comments including threatening messages had been made on the notices. These comments pointed to the effect that they would not respect the decision and position of the JCR.

However, the resolution put the fear of God into them. None of the agitators went to the canteen for breakfast.That week, those without coupons had to eat from outside the hall canteen. When they looked at their expenses and counted the cost, they were the first to queue to buy food coupons the following Friday.

Sometimes, tough measures are needed to implement policies and decisions in the public interest, but which may be resisted for dysfunctional reasons.