Written By Waleed Alhweeshel
With the pressure of the Exams season looming over the student’s mind and mental health; the rise in Covid cases and the uncertainty of the future seems to further pressurize students and raise dissatisfaction between many student populations in their respective Academic fields towards their faculties.
This pushed some students to take matters into their own hands and went to social media like what happened to the Masters Students in FEMA which lead to the ignition of conversation between their respective student organization and FEMA to reconsider their decision to shift into Physical examination with no chance of online examination for those quarantined and only provide them with an option to take their exam in September.
This sparked a wave of voicing over dissatisfaction with University of Malta’s lack of planning for the examination period from different Faculty-based-organizations which included ‘GhsL’ with their president Martina Cassar commenting on a post made public on Facebook on the 16th of December
Law Organization have been struggling to get some concrete answers from faculty for weeks
Till this day with exam being less than a month away, faculty or registrar have NO CLUE what would be the contingency plan should a student be in quarantine for an exam
Other Law Student Organizations came out with their own statement about the situation requesting more clarification from their faculty side.
Other Faculty-based organizations – for example MMSA – are dealing with a similar situation in their own faculty but opted to deal with the situation internally with their own students’ population and faculty administration
After all these incidents within the university of Malta the KSU came out with a statement Today updating the student body about what is happening and clarifying where they stand in the whole situation:
KSU was informed that discussion were still ongoing and that mitigation measures will be placed to deal with the arising situation and FAQs are to be released soon
They went on to clarify the current policy:
The current policy seems to be that should a student be in mandatory quarantine whilst scheduled for an exam, they would have to sit for the exam as a first sit in September. However, having a substantial number of students doing so is not logistically possible for the University, as confirmed by the Office of the Registrar. For students in their final year of studies, doing a first sit exam in September is unfair and illogical
The KSU Urged the University of Malta to reconsider the direction given regarding the situation and pushed for switching of examination into online setting putting into consideration each unit requirement
KSU is of the firm belief that the only visible solution for the upcoming January session would be to have examinations shifted online where feasible, while taking the requirements of each unit into consideration
The situation is still on going. The uncertainty persists, but with a growing number of students, organizations, and KSU releasing statements about the situation, one can hope that University of Malta comes out with a clear and comprehensive plan as soon as possible to help put students minds at ease to deal with their exams without jeopardizing their future or questioning their own safety and the safety of their loved ones.
For the full statement by KSU click here
For past article about the situation click here
