Absent photos mar UWI graduation for some students

Andre Williams, Staff Reporter 

Tears and disappointment marred what should have been a momentous occasion for some expectant graduands during the University of The West Indies, Mona presentation of the 2021 graduating class.

The names of some students were left out of the video presentation, leaving students and their families disappointed.

The university has expressed regret over the incident and told The Gleaner that steps are being taken to upload a new production.

This, however, will not be remedied for today, the final staging in the two-day ceremony which began yesterday. 

A very upset law graduand who spoke with The Gleaner on condition of anonymity blamed the university for the absent photos.

“It's ridiculous that you can spend three years and not see your name come up on the screen after you put in some much work.” 

Similar sentiments were expressed by other students, with some saying that they were brought to tears.

The law graduand said that he was left disappointed when he sought answers about his absence from the video presentation.

“They just said the regular that they are sorry and they will look into the matter as quickly as possible and give me further information but that's not really any sort of help. Somebody missed their graduation,” he said.

According to campus registrar, Dr Donovan Stanberry, the issue was not widespread.

“Personally, to this office, in terms of people complaining, emails and calls, I have gotten less than 10 calls since yesterday when we started airing,” Stanberry told The Gleaner. 

For today's ceremony, he expects “there might be one or two people”. 

The campus registrar, however, sought to shed light on what may have led to the issue, telling The Gleaner that students were asked to indicate their participation in the graduation ceremony via a special link on the website and that they were sent a special email to that effect.

“The problem lies in the fact that at the beginning of the process, as you would know, the graduation this year, due to COVID-19 conditions still prevailing, has to be an online production. With online production, we have very, very aggressive timelines in terms of putting all the pieces of the production together. The most critical ones being synchronising students' photographs with the calling of their names.” 

Stanberry said it was unfortunate that some graduands did not realise that there was a link and perhaps thought that just taking their graduation pictures meant that they would appear in the video production ceremony. 

“All is not lost. We are going to send out another advisory to our students between today and Monday. We will take the same production that was aired yesterday and are being aired today and we will amend them and include those students who simply overlooked that link. Once their photographs have already been taken, we will include it and will upload that new production, call it version 2 and we will advise them of the time,” said Stanberry.

Follow The Gleaner on Twitter and Instagram @JamaicaGleaner and on Facebook @GleanerJamaica. Send us a message on WhatsApp at 1-876-499-0169 or email us at onlinefeedback@gleanerjm.com or editors@gleanerjm.com.