The young cheats of UON

For those who passed through University of Nairobi and registered at the department of Political Science, you must know Prof. Phillip Nying’uro.

For those who don’t, Nying’uro is proud and arrogant to be a lecturer, he will not shy away from letting you know he has a PhD and has gone to school for all those years. He goes on to tell you how in their day, they used to read and would still get any supplementary.

While at it, he laments how the parallel program has produced still born who don’t read, rely only on notes, are in a hurry to finish their courses and most of all, rely on their notes and still do not get any supplementary.

He claims that students rush to the sociology and communication departments because they get to “harvest A’s”.
If arguing on emotions, one may attack the prof. as being arrogant, conceited, egocentric, and a host of other adjectives you can come up with.

But evaluated soberly, his concerns are very valid. None of the students I talked to, disputed his arguments about time spent in the library and the fact that the departments in question give “good or better grades.”

That may be a better story to defend, talk about exams.

A friend of mine found herself to the subject of giggling, immature girls when she reported to the lecturer that they were copying exams and in the process adulterating her grades.

The girls were pointing at her because she had asked the lecturer to be more vigilant to the students who were distracting the class because they were bus turning pages. They thought she was hostile to their “good grades”.

The girls and boys were busy turning pages and asking each other “ni hii? Apana sio hiyo,” while dabbing in an exam. The students were so thick that they don’t even know their exercise books very well.

But the UON administration is to blame, there were about 80 students crammed in the stuffy Science 1 lab. It was so squeezed that the students could easily read each other’s answer papers.

And the lecturer kept on walking in and out of the exam room. It is understandable if some students feel cheated.

You would be shocked that in most cases, the students who carry “mwakenya” to the examination room are not the older working students. In most cases they are the young 19, 20-year-olds, who are dropped to school by their parents at 8 am and leave at night.

One has to wonder, if you have all the time, why cheat. The answer is simple, they have no clue, most of them. There are some who have a hung of things, but other, can even cram for you the whole book and reproduce it if need be.

One girl, known for dabbing, wondered why people have a problem. “Kama mtu hataki ku-dab si akae,” she said.

You may also ask a similar question and add that in some universities in the west, students are given exams to do overnight and deliver in the morning. So why do we feel bad when they cram or dab.

In my opinion, I think the parallel program is a good idea, and I am not saying that regular students don’t dap, they do.

The university suspends students guilty of examination irregularities, but this has to be accompanied by other measures like making sure that the examination environment is conducive.

More than that, I think the parallel programme should have an age limit, admit students who are beyond 25 so that they can have a level of maturity.

The opinions are varied. Bring them on!!!!

Ends