Hall still yearns for campus centre

Amid renaming the administrative block of The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona in honour of Sir Kenneth Hall two weeks ago, the former principal is still disappointed that a campus centre has not been constructed over a decade after he left.

Hall left The UWI, Mona campus after being appointed Jamaica’s fifth governor-general in February 2006. He served as pro-vice-chancellor and principal at The UWI between 1996 and 2006, and was renowned for policies he implemented that resulted in significant transformation in academic programmes and the construction of the administrative building which brought all administrative segments on the campus under one roof, after being sparsely located for decades.

“I’ve said it, so I can say it again, (biggest disappointment) was that they did not create a campus centre which would have housed all the facilities and allow students and their parents, when they come on to the campus, to have a place and I still feel that I should say it,” the 82-year-old retiree said.

“I’m not going to pretend that it was not a disappointment. It was a blow to (the) campus,” said Hall.

Overdue JPS bill

During the renaming ceremony in his honour on the evening of December 14, and as 2023 comes to a close, Hall could not help himself from also reflecting on when staff members rejected his presence, and the electricity for the campus was on the verge of being cut by the Jamaica Public Service (JPS).

“One day, I got some information that JPS was going to lock down the tower on the campus because we had not paid our bills, and it was not exactly a small bill, as you can imagine. There was no money to pay, so I trek down to Heroes Circle [the Ministry of Education’s building] and one of the really influential persons in this country, but you don’t hear a lot in our circles, Ms [Shirley] Tyndale ... If you don’t know those two persons at that period, you’re not getting any place, and so went down with all humility, hoping that she would be supportive,” he shared.

“At my great surprise, she just said, ‘You can’t close the university’. She took up her phone, called JPS and said, ‘You can’t close the university. I’m sorry. Even if the Government will assume the cost until we work it out’. Ms Tyndale, you can never imagine what that meant to me,” Hall said.

“It was impromptu. She didn’t know I was coming. I just turned up at her office,” he said.

In addition to this, he recalls when Damion Crawford, the now politician and shadow minister of education, bravely padlocked the gates of the campus in protest of students’ dissatisfaction, wanting respect for their views and addressing their needs.

“Now, my good friend, Mr Crawford, closed the gates and threatened everything else and had the university in the news, such a way that I had to be reminded that I should respond, but I did not personally respond,” Hall said.

“We were able to meet, sorted it out with Damion Crawford and we became good friends after that, and I have come to admire him for several reasons. He was the only person I knew who made sense or rather, nonsense of the way the university was being funded because he went to the budget meeting at the ministry single-handedly, no briefs, nothing, sat in the meeting as the representative of the students and convinced the [then] minister, especially the bursar at the university, that the whole thing was a hoax,” he said, which those gathered laughed about.

This act by Crawford, he said, resulted in the bursary repayments being restructured, which is a main function on the ground floor of the administrative building that was renamed in his honour.

Hall explained that that call by Crawford was not the best impression he had of the young activist at the time.

“There was a hurricane soon thereafter, and those students who were on campus, housed in the Assembly Hall, to my great surprise, Damion organised a group of students ... as he is a bona fide trained chef, and Damion as president of the Guild, he said, ‘I have to feed my followers’ and so he cooked for them, and he invited all of us to come in and watch,” Hall recalled.

“Those two things have left an indelible mark on me, so while he was prepared to lock me out of the campus, he was also prepared to feed the students who needed his help at that particular moment,” he said.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com