Botho University Preaches Reconciliation
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Monday March 27, 2017 16:52
The university’s communications agent Kelly Obeilwe, of Native Impressions, echoed the reconciliation efforts.
The university was closed after students expressed concern over unaccredited courses, lack of resources, among other things.
Obeilwe said the management has an elaborate consultative system with the students and will continue to engage with them to address issues of concern.
“We have engaged key stakeholders such as parents and industry leaders as well as the Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA) who also thoroughly explained the process through their address to students and public notices,” she said. eanwhile, Obeilwe explained that the university resumed classes on Monday and had since observed the restoration of normal operations with classes running swiftly with a good turn out.
She added that the management was proud of the cooperation demonstrated by the students and would there forth engage with a series of communications to reconcile with the students and instill the spirit of Botho.
Meanwhile, she stated that as of March 20, 2017 Botho University had 16 fully accredited programmes, 11 provisionally accredited, 15 deferred accreditation, eight awaiting decision, four programmes that had been running under one year and no rejected programmes.
On Monday, the Minister of Tertiary Education, Research Science and Technology, Alfred Madigele called on institutions to make peace with their students.
Speaking at this year’s Human Resource Development Skills Fair and Career Clinics at Fairgrounds Holdings, the minister said conflict resolution was conceptualised as the method and process involved in facilitating the peaceful ending of conflict and retribution.
“Those knowledgeable in conflict resolution tell us that individuals and group members attempt to resolve conflict by actively communicating information about their conflict motives or ideologies to others and or the group, their intentions, reasons for holding certain beliefs and by engaging in negotiations.
The solution lies in negotiations,” he said. He explained that he was intentionally discoursing on conflict and conflict resolution because of the latest unfortunate events where there was conflict between educational providers and students.
However, he pointed out that he was not intentionally apportioning blame. Madigele said even though conflict was part of everyone’s lives, they need to find solutions to the problems bedeviling them.