As the society becomes more liberal, students have taken the cue and all forms of expression have spread to lecture halls. Students have taken the liberalism to the class by dressing in what many lecturers and the admin would consider scandalous and out of place.
“I was invigilating an exam when I spotted a female student reading answers from a phone tucked between her thighs covered by a very short skirt,” one lecturer narrates.
Dr Mwangi says he was at loss in what course of action to take until a female invigilator stepped in at the nip of time.
“Should I apprehend her and risk facing sexual assault offense or should I ignore her and let her continue cheating in exam?” he asked.
The student was eventually whisked out of the exam room but the incident still echos in his mind.
Such is the dare situation lecturers are finding themselves in, that most of them are now finding private universities alluring because of their strict dressing code for students.
But students don’t think this is an issue that should distract lecturers.
“Scanty dressing by some of our students is simply outrageous,” laments Ms Susan Laimaru, Assistant Dean of students at Kenya Methodist University. “We don’t appreciate what some of these students put on, we have tried to counsel them but everything seems to fall on deaf ears”.
For Mr. Joshua Ateka, Senior lecturer at Moi University’s School of Information Science, morality is on a downward spiral and the effects are manifesting in behaviour and dressing.
“I get particularly upset when a student tiptoes into my lecture scantly dressed and seemingly not oblivious of the interruption she is causing. It’s very offending to the lecturer,” He says.
While he agrees that a lecturer’s maturity ought to prevail in such situations, he doesn’t rule out that lecturers’ focus may be obscured when such an incident occurs.
