EDITORIAL

AVMS NAMETAG SAGA: CALLING THE AVMS EXECUTIVES AND SENATE CHAMBER TO ORDER.

Since February 19, the University of Ibadan has resumed for her 2020/2021 session. This session opened the doors to new practices in the university, including online classes and online course registrations, as well as a completely computer based post-UME test. It is not surprising that the Association of Veterinary Medical Students Executives are adding one more hitherto unpractised practice to this list of new things, by urging students to compulsorily pay for name tags as a part of their AVMS dues. 

This news has come as a shock to veterinary medical students, most of whom are astounded at being asked to pay for name tags which they already have. The last name tags were issued in the 2016/2017 session, and a huge population of the DVMIV and DVMV students already have nametags. However, this does not seem to matter to the Executives, who are charging seven hundred naira per head, while sidestepping the fact that the average cost of a name tag is five hundred naira. The more surprising aspect of this news seems to be the reluctance of the AVMS Senate to bring the executives to order, the job they were elected to do. 

Article IV, Section II, The Subsection II (a) of the AVMS Senate constitution states that “Such special levies can be debatable and adopted at the congress if need be and must be adopted by two-third majority of the congress.” The Article II, Section IV, Subsection III (b) states that “Each class is empowered to recall its representative(s) following proof of misrepresentation and such action shall be communicated to the Senate through the clerk.” However, it seems that the members of the Senate have been severely misinformed about their jobs, one of which is communicating to the students in their constituency when major changes such as this arise. The members of the senate have profusely failed in this regard. The news came as a shock to every student in the faculty, and one must wonder if the AVMS Senate were also shocked by the news and claimed to know about it only to save face. 

The penalty for refusing to pay for the name tag is exclusion from university examinations since it is made compulsory just as the basic dues, a price that is steep and does not take into account the alarming number of indigent students that would struggle to raise this fee. Also, is it sensible to ask students who already have name tags to pay again? These, and many more questions, are on the tips of students’ lips, but no one is certain whom to ask. This is a clarion call to the Senate Chamber to do the right thing.