National Student Union of Belize Comes Out in Support of U.B.F.S.U.
This week, we have been reporting on the issues brewing at the University of Belize between the senior administration and the UB Faculty and Staff Union. The Board of Trustees issued a stern letter this week to tell the faculty to go back to teaching or else they may face terminations. While the U.B.F.S.U. has not responded to the threat, the National Students’ Union of Belize has issued its own three-page release. The N.S.U.B. says that they received feedback from their membership and they simply want the matters to be sorted out – primarily that the online platform issues are addressed so that students can get underway with the new school year. The N.S.U.B. also says that it does not appreciate the Board of Trustees’ letter to the faculty, saying those threats are tantamount to union busting. Here’s more from Dominique Noralez of the N.S.U.B.
On the Phone: Dominique Noralez, Student Affairs Director, N.S.U.B.
“We responded the way we did because our membership has been expressing to us the issues they have been having with the online platform of moodle even before the pandemic happened. Now, it has exacerbated because of the huge number of students who are on the platform now because the university has moved completely online. When we speak about the issue of U.B.F.S.U. and the administration, we responded in that way because to us it looks like a sort of union busting to be threatening the U.B.F.S.U. members who have said that they will do a sort of soft opening to the beginning of the semester simply until they can finalize the courses they are teaching and how they are going to do it and how they are going to shift to an online platform because outside of the technological and technical aspect, there is also the pedagogy of being able to teach on a platform online and also have the technology being on the receiving end. So that is why we responded the way we did, supporting the students and by extension their lecturers because the quality of the education is affected at all levels. What we have been getting is that students are equally frustrated with the whole situation because they believe that they are like children caught up in an abusive home of parents and they are just getting the brunt and blunt of this seemingly toxic relationship between UB Admin and the U.B.F.S.U.”
