The Making of an Academic Revolution: Personal Reflections

 Today makes it a year. One full year since that solitary silent day in June 2021, when an academic injustice was meted out on the lives of hundreds, altering their life course significantly. I went back in memory lane to the events of that day, and the weeks, and months that followed.

We had had a rather start-stop academic calendar. The reason for this was the outbreak of the you-all-know-what virus that had brought the world to its knees. Confronted by an unseen enemy, we were sent scampering in retreat and so did our school activities. It took us some time to resume but when we finally did, we completed our academic calendar with a 4-month long work training called clerkship. Like anyone else would, within days of completion, we started anticipating the release of our results and graduation.

Prior to that life-defining Tuesday evening, we had spent most of the weeks speculating about the outcome of the results. We had a few naughty ones among us pulling up a prank here and there. They would rename an empty document “LDC Results 2019/2020” and send everyone into a mini-panic. Then we would laugh about it while of course as others swore at them. The jokes had finally run their full course.

Tuesday, June 2, 2021

Not one sign under the sky showed that this would be the day. Not for many of us but maybe for the institution’s top brass. Our class WhatsApp group went about with its usual banter and speculation. It approached lunchtime, then 3 pm, and when it came to 5 pm we all knew it wasn't going to be the day. We mentally signed out and knew we would try again the following day. So, I decided to take an evening nap. Midway through my sleep was when it all unfolded and with no prior notice, the email we had all been waiting for came through. At 07:32 pm, the Academic Registrar sent through an email titled, “Final Examination Results”, laden with 5 attachments and with them the fate of thousands. These were for real this time.

Thirteen minutes later, at precisely 07:45 pm, I received a phone call that startled me out of my sleep. It was one of my closest friends on the other end of the line. He is always the first person I discuss results with. We had done this ritual countless times over the past five years and this was supposed to be another of those moments. "Hello, my brother. The results are out and you have passed, but that isn’t so for very many students. In all honesty, it is not looking good.” My heart raced because, in that brief period, he mentioned to me some of those who hadn't made it, and my heart sunk.  We spoke for scarcely five minutes and we hang up, I opened the email to see it myself.

Disaster unspeakable!

I don’t know if it was by design to have the results released on a day before a public holiday or maybe an attempt to take the sting out of them. Whichever it was, it didn’t work. But what it succeeded in, was making it the longest day in the lives of those who were awaiting access to the LDC premises to book their slots for supplementary exams. The administration had won the psychological battle.

The one thing I grappled with most during that period was how to help my friends through it. I never know what to tell those nursing disappointments. I don't judge. I don't question. I don't push away. I only welcome. No question they lay in bed, no doubt they stared at the ceiling, I know many times they cried but even in the deepest of emotions they never fully found answers. Even when I couldn’t provide any of those answers, as a believer, I always said a little prayer for them.

The graduation date which had been set only a week later came and went with little aplomb.

The ‘Revolution’

In the days that followed, there was a massive uproar over the handling of the entire process. It was the first time in living memory that we had received a list of students graduating without any of them knowing a single mark they scored. There were many wrong things but this one was on top of the pile.

They usually say that it is in moments of tribulation that heroes are birthed. At a time when the lone and timid voices of individual students were blubbering, with everyone fearing to put their heads above the parapet, there rose a bold and fearless warrior who made a conscious choice to “pick up arms and fight for justice”. With her, she was followed by “27 fighters” (we were in actual sense 17) who would help her launch a full-chested war against an establishment that no one thought was touchable. The battle was christened ‘Operation Walls of Jericho.” We spent some time planning because it wouldn’t be long before we made our “Kabamba attack.” (For the record, ours was not a rag-tag army)

For every group, there is bound to be a discussion about strategy and splitting of opinions. We weighed options depending on various factors i.e. time it would take to achieve the remedies sought. In the end, what mattered was the majority decision. In the end, we had made up our minds on the “key government installations” where we would drop our “bombs”. We petitioned the institution’s governing body and its regulators to comprehensively look into the circumstances surrounding the release of examinations. We prepared a 30-paged petition and a bulk of annexures to justify the case being made. We were heard and judgment found glaring errors and failure to follow the rules in the entire process. That for many was an important pronouncement because for so long everyone dismissed us as a bunch of noise-makers who had refused to read and were entitled to passing.

Like any revolution, we were faced with innumerable challenges. Threats were employed at a point, fatigue would sometimes set, and many others. It was hard to stay on course, it was honestly difficult and how those guys (the 86’ guys) kept it going for 5 solid years isn’t given enough credit. (That shouldn’t be a licence for their entitlement though) Less than a month and we were almost giving up and yet we were not even sleeping in bushes and tall thickets either.  

In the end, we had knocked on that tall impenetrable carte blanche door until it fell. The cloak of invincibility had been pierced and I am elated that our successors have benefited from some of the tiny efforts. In the past week, many of those who drowned in tears last year today finally had a smile back on their faces, and "a historical error" has been corrected. For those with a dark cloud still hovering over you, don’t worry because one day the sky will clear and it will shine brightest again.

 

PS: This piece is a special dedication to our Commander in Chief, General Atuhaire Agather (R-01) & 16 others (you know yourselves).