Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados TODAY Inc.
by Walter Edey
Caterpillars transform from a tree-clinging pest into a majestic flying butterfly. This is a fantastic mechanism of nature. Yet, observing this organic process doesn’t tell the complete story.
Understanding the inside story reveals the truth. That internal digestive mechanism enables the caterpillar to become a butterfly. That tough leap of change sets free the butterfly that then assumes a new role in nature’s kingdom.
Institutions are butterflies in the waiting. But it is the satisfied internal hunger that triggers freedom. Not the billboards of external success and achievement, personal acclaim, or legacy. Freedom is self-led -an internal, not an external motif of change.
The University of the West Indies is about seventy-three years old. It knows the struggle of effort and the glory of success. Understanding leadership, management, and relationships are within the University’s grasp and experience.
Consequently, what is unsaid is the only way to assess Sir Charles Michael Dennis Byron report. Byron report reflects a culture of the internal struggle of institutions.
The UWI has now joined rather than lead an island culture of resignation. In Barbados, the cry for reform is a stillborn voice of hot air.
Several reports on reorganisation are in file thirteen: education, the economy, the public service, and governance. Read but not digested and internalized. Still, loud claims and promises of intention and sounds of the public building’s clock, abound.
In 1948 the university was a medical idea, the organic response of a commissioned report. The Mona campus was ugly: a reclaimed army headquarters. Money and resources were scarce.
The idea clung to the University of London for sustenance and fresh air. That caterpillar transformed and became a butterfly, flew East across the Caribbean.
When it laid its eggs Barbados in 1963, a caterpillar fed on the tree leaves of Barbados: the buildings left from the Deep-water Harbour project; the teachers in the Secondary school system, who became professors; a group of knowledge seekers whose financial empty pockets thwarted the Mona trip, and who grabbed the opportunity with heads and hands. The wings of the butterfly were strong and its colours shone in the sun.
The Byron report is more than a critique of performance, leadership, and maintenance. Growth and contribution are dynamic, not static.
Success and achivement are always incomplete, always seeking unexplored and unfamiliar landscapes and seascapes; always breaking rules. The Byron report confronts understanding of the internal technology of the UWI. It begs answers to the question what are the current needs, not the glory of yesterday’s dead labour?
The University of the West Indies is an exemplar of using what you have within the Caribbean experience. It did so by building relationships, by the humility of effort and not the arrogance of academic success. It now must climb new hills in order to grow.
Reducing the cost of university education is one of them. In Barbados, clusters of secondary sixth-form schools exist. Their collective physical resources are superior to the
Deep-water Harbour site, where UWI Cave Hill began. They are shared fertile spaces awaiting eggs and nurturing.
Two-year sixth-form College accredited UWI programmes will reduce student economic costs and save governments money.
The separation of The UWI from its work will begin to resolve the university’s internal struggle. It will be leadership by example. Ultimately, the success of Caribbean governments and institutions is the fairest measure of the University of the West Indies. Only free and independent institutions can lead a free Caribbean.
The UWI must now set itself free.
Walter Edey is a retired math and science educator.
