Combatant greetings to all members of the Olabisi Onabanjo Students’ Union (OOUites) , May your consciousness never die. It is a known fact that students of this school have a record of high intellectuality and sagacity and are over time known to approach issues with utmost civility.
What happened to our students today hit the bone-marrow of the Students’ Union and such ought not to have occurred in the first place. How students were harassed, delayed and eventually denied access to learn deals a big blow on the Union.
Although as this ugly incident was occurring, the Students’ union representatives were physically absent, but we never ceased to intervene. We hereby apologize to all affected students and none affected ones, we were actually engaged in other issues that concerned the students; transportation and conducive accommodation of students. As soon as possible, we will communicate on that.
The Union has reached out to the Vice Chancellor on what happened today to register our grievances. As a Union saddled with the responsibility of protecting the interests her members, we stand against all forms of oppression and particularly we condemn what happened at the gate on Monday.
We supposed that the management after informing the Students’ Union President about the executive order to bar students from wearing foot-wears without a strap (Slippers), would have allowed us a space for consultation with members of our union to decide the justifiability and reasonability of the order. Instead they went ahead to harass our members and inadvertently restrict them from accessing education, for which fundamentally are enrolled in the institution.
The University is a community of people from various leanings: in value, religious and ideological viewpoints etc. And before making any policy, this dichotomies must be addressed with consideration to the secularity of the institution, so that we do not end up imposing our own sectarian moral standards on people of varying standards.
Once again, the Union urge the school management to immediately lift this restriction and to further respect student’s rights to expression and dignity of humanity. We believe that policing the dress code of students should be tertiary to academic development and enhancement of learning facilities, as a matter of concern to the school management. Till now, we haven’t found a nexus between academic development and dress codes of student.
We hereby call on all members of the Olabisi Onabanjo Students’ union, from faculty leaders to departmental executives, down to the lastly admitted student of the school, to appear on the campus today. The dress code is reversed to status quo and all students are to come to school in wearing foot-wears of their choice (sandals, shoes, slippers).
The Union executives along with other students representatives will proceed into meeting with the school management today and subsequently will hold a general assembly to relate feed back to members (students). We are all urged to attend in company of other students as the union will be giving a listening ear to all plights of the students and deciding a way out from this ditch. The venue and time of the generally assembly respectively are:
AA hall and 1pm.
Members are urged to heed this clarion call as attendance of the general assembly is in their interest.
Signed ✍️
Sen. AKOREDE Afeez. (Sen. Modesty).
_The Union President_
Comr. ALABI Micheal (ALESH)
_The Union Public Relation Officer._