High Court Judge John Mativo has today (16.08.19) declined to halt the upcoming 38th Moi University Graduation ceremony slated to held on the 22nd of August 2019.
This is after 13 students from Moi University, Nairobi Campus pursuing degrees in Communication and Public Relations as well as Communication and Journalism filed a petition seeking to stop University graduation ceremony until their names are included in the graduation list.
Speaking to The Sauce, one of the petitioners of the case who was in court this morning said that the graduation ceremony will go on as planned and that the case will be heard on August 20, 2019, in Mombasa. The source also revealed that the University is yet to file a defence and the Judge ordered them to do so immediately as the matter is deemed urgent.
The ruling on whether the affected students will graduate or not will be delivered next week.
In the petition, the students said they have frantically tried to reach the University to include their names on the graduation list since it was released on Saturday, 10th August 2019 but to date, the University has given them a deaf ear.
They are now accusing the university of violating their constitutional rights. “Article 27 guarantees every person the right to non-discrimination. The irregular and negligent and unlawful exclusion of the petitioners in the list of graduands at the 38th Graduation List, scheduled for 22nd August 2019 and the inclusion of some of their classmates is a clear violation of the petitioners right to non-discrimination. The petitioners question the criteria used to exclude them while some of their classmates were included in the list” read the petition.
“The respondent is in breach of the petitioners’ legitimate expectation to graduate on the 22nd of August 2019. Indeed, some of the students from the same class are listed to graduate. The petitioners affirm that they paid their University fees as and when required, sat for their exams as and when required and handed in their project work by the deadline set” the petition read.
The students are among about 700 others protesting their exclusion from the list. The affected students who enrolled at the university between 2015 and 2016 ought to have graduated last December but the graduation was pushed to 22nd of August 2019 due to the lecturers strikes.
They claim their marks for Editing and Publishing Skills, a unit they had taken in their third academic year-(2016/2017) were not reflecting in the students’ portals.
The university management, however, says many of the aggrieved students had huge fee balances and missing marks, claims denied by the students.
Some of the aggrieved students convened outside the university’s administration block demanding that their names be added to the list ahead of the graduation next week.
The students blamed the University for neglecting them and taking them for granted even after intervention by the Ministry of Education.
According to the Moi University’s Public Relations Officer Patricia Cherambos, it is too late for them to be listed for graduation.