University Of Ghana Must Get Rid Of Killer-Desks

Another semester is getting to an end and students are busily preparing to account the cost of their academic adventure through the heavy arms of End of Semester Examinations. It is indeed true that they say "Meat that has fat will prove itself by the heat of fire" so this exams are expected to test the academic performance of students throughout the entire semester. This is when the university authorities will require of various students to make known the impact they have allowed the semester to have on them by proving their academic excellence and intellectual dexterity.

This is when lecture halls get full and revision classes are observed to be full of "new faces”; faces of students who are seen not to be consistent and punctual with lectures during the semester; and this is undoubtedly a prophetic language that obviously tell us how much the end of semester examination mean to these students. They would spend the entire night burning their midnight candles all in the hope of maintaining or improving their current academic performance. This should tell us that these students apportion so much time and energy into their academic investment to the extent that they expect no hindrance or anything that will end up killing their "vibe”, not even a killer-chair like those in some lecture and examination halls in University of Ghana, Legon.

We will all agree to the fact that, the environment in which we find ourselves play a vital role in whatever we do and if care is not taken, results of our daily endeavors could be compromised, thus impeding our respective dreams for which we so aspire to accomplish our various tasks. For this reason I stand to write about the threat desks in some lecture and examination halls pose to students of University of Ghana and the consequent thereof if remedies are not sought to alleviate or utterly eradicate this threat. Most of these desks could be found in halls like Jones Quartey's Block popularly known by the acronym "JQB" and other lecture halls on campus. JQB is no doubt one of the oldest and most popular lecture halls presently in University of Ghana, even though there are well furnished newer ones. Some of these lecture halls were built to accommodate the type of desks that are used in basic schools mainly the government schools.

If it were in basic schools where the kids are just younger, I would say it will not be a problem since they will actually fit in the desk because of their tender age, hence smaller body size. But for a well matured university student trying to seat comfortably in these desks is a very big problem and a hindrance to students' academic excellence. Most students after sitting for an hour would have to face a burning hellfire at their bottom and severe pains in the spinal cord due to nature of the desks. Most of these matured students will have to adjust their bottom on the desk trying to feel comfortable which sincerely they would not. In fact most students I talked to confessed they pray for lectures to end quickly so they could go outside and stretch their muscles, a pain imposed on them by the "Killer-desks".

These desks were introduced into the Ghanaian education system by Ghana Education Service couple of decades ago and were used mainly in governmental basic schools. As the years goes by and infrastructure improves, most governmental basic schools sees these desk to be archaic and unhealthy for learning so there is improvement where more comfortable modern desks are trooping into the classrooms. University of Ghana happens to be currently using some of these desks in some lecture halls, maybe because these particular halls are designed to carry such desks since their construction 50 years ago. But should the University authorities not renovate these halls and convert them into a more modernized ones furnished with comfortable desks?

The menace of these killer-desks become more intense during examination periods when students will have to wrestle with the pain coupled with the situation. Most examination papers are even longer in length than the desk and a student writing examination with limited time would have to face the problem of frequently positioning the paper well on the desk, most of which eats into their examination time leading to poor performance.

I therefore propose the university authorities will have to conduct a renovation exercise on some of these lecture halls and have these desks changed to the comfort of students who have paid huge amount of money for their enrollment or admission into the university and expect nothing more than the best of service and facilities. It does not matter if the lecture halls were built half a century ago, all that matters is if they could be unquestionably beneficial to students’ academia with their modernized facilities and infrastructure like comfortable desks, not killer-desks.

Richard Asumah Kwaku Tetteh
University of Ghana, Legon
Youth Activist
[email protected]