American Global University Rep. clears up allegations

The Ministry of Education today issued a release on the situation with the American Global University School of Medicine, in particular. The release contains six points which the Ministry says should put in context statements to the media by certain individuals. It doesn’t actually say much, except that the charter to the school was issued under the previous administration in 2005, and if there are any deficiencies in operations or violations of the charter, those will be dealt with in accordance with the provisions of the charter. But with that said, the recent allegations against the schools are still out there. Well, today Vice President of Operations Peggy Allen spoke to News Five from the US via phone to clear up those allegations. Freelance Reporter Mike Rudon has that story.

Mike Rudon, Reporting

At a press conference on Tuesday presenters Phillip ‘Fada’ Henry and Patrick Menzies made very serious accusations against the American Global University School of Medicine. One of those allegations is that the school, which is located in Ladyville, is deserted, which suggests that it is just a sham. Vice President of Operations Peggy Allen explained the deserted facility, and also the lack of students there, via phone today.

Peggy Allen

Via Phone: Peggy Allen, Vice President of Operations, AGU

“There have been some allegations that we don’t have an institution. Well that’s being stated by individuals who don’t understand our program. Our program in Belize consists of two sets of parts of a four year program. The first part of the program is the basic science program. And the basic science program consists of four to five semesters held on campus in Belize. And once students complete that part of the program, they transition to the clinical sciences program. And the clinical sciences program consists of again approximately two years—it is actually seventy-two weeks of clinical rotations, but the time it takes to complete that seventy-two weeks usually encompasses a two year period because students in that time are also taking medical licensing exams and everything. So those students end up transitioning out of Belize after they have completed their basic science program. And so we plan this for quite some time so we were strategically waiting for students to be transitioning out of the basic science program so that we would have the time to make the renovations and get it completed.”

But even more damning than that, Menzies claimed that he had personally googled all the alleged graduates of the American Global University, and had only found a vague reference to one of the two hundred. That, they claimed, was sure proof that something was very, very wrong.

Via Phone: Peggy Allen

“How did they get the list of our students? I mean, I would assume you would have to have each individual student’s name to google their name to find out what they are doing. And I think that that would be quite impossible because we have not released that information to anyone. So I believe those allegations are completely false and I can’t believe that someone could even google all of our students names because we don’t have one particular list; we don’t have all of those students listed on a list that someone could take and google their names. So I believe it might be a false statement and I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know really how to answer that because to me it is kind of an impossible question to answer.”

According to Allen, these allegations against the schools haven’t just surfaced again by chance, but are the result of an attack by a competing school. And she says it doesn’t affect them in the slightest.

Via Phone: Peggy Allen

“This is obviously a malicious ploy by individuals who are getting paid to create a smear campaign against the university and we are well aware of that. We actually went through this situation before. It appears that another university in the area may be concerned that we have located back to the mainland and couple weeks ago, our employee who is there in Belize City; he did receive some threats from that individual. And then all of a sudden a week or two after that, we got all of this stuff surfacing in the media. So we are well-aware of what’s going on right now. It is very sad to say that people are using this; that they are investigating medical universities. It is not the investigation of a medical university, it is an investigation to create a smear campaign and we are well-aware of that. And we have the quality program to back us up. So we just use this as a small bump in the road and we will handle it accordingly.”

To deal with this matter, Allen says that the school will be hosting a press conference later this week, and she also sends out an invitation to those individuals who lashed out at the school in the press conference on Tuesday. Mike Rudon for News Five.