To the Executive and Legislative Councils of the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Department of Political Science, we write this letter as the mouthpiece of the students you were elected to serve. It is not written out of malice. It is written because last semester left too many students disappointed, and this semester must not repeat that story.
Let us remind ourselves what happened.
At the faculty level, what should have been a working relationship between the Executive and the Faculty House of Representatives turned into open rancour. The disagreement escalated to a point where the President of the Faculty of The Social Sciences was impeached. It took the intervention of faculty management and other stakeholders to resolve the matter and restore some sense of order. That should never have gotten that far.
At the departmental level, political science almost had a similar story. The Vice President and the General Secretary came close to removal from office by the departmental senate over alleged negligence of duty. Close is the operative word. Only a difference of degree separated our department from the same embarrassment that played out at the faculty level. We came so close to seeing two arms of government collapse in one semester.
We ask a simple question, what did the students who voted you in actually gain from all of this?
The students never signed up for any of this. They did not defend your manifestos so that you could spend a semester fighting each other instead of fighting for them. When a student pays levies, when a student expects a quality handbook, a working timetable, a responsive welfare office, or simply a leadership that shows up, drama and disagreement are not part of the bargain.
Every hour spent on internal politicking is an hour stolen from the students you swore to represent. Every impeachment threat, every negligence query, every faction that forms within a council is a distraction from the actual job.
This is not a call for leaders to become silent or for legislative bodies to become a rubber stamp. Checks and balances exist for a reason, and the Faculty House of Representatives and the departmental senate have every right to query non-performance or negligence where it truly exists. That is in fact your constitutional duty. What we do not want is avoidable drama. What we condemn is when accountability turns into personal feud, when oversight becomes an avenue for settling scores, and when disagreements that should be resolved in a clandestine meeting spill into public spectacle that embarrasses the entire faculty.
Second semester is here. It comes with its usual weight. Tighter academic calendars, different activities and many more. It is also, for many of you, the back half of your tenure. There will not be a third semester to make up for lost time.
So here is our appeal, plain and direct. To the Executives: govern with transparency. Negligence of duty is not a small allegation, and if the FHR or the departmental senate raised it, the answer should not be aggressive defensiveness. The answer is to do the work and show your workings.
To the Houses of Representatives and the Senate: hold your executives accountable, but do it as partners in governance, not as opposition to be defeated. Oversight should build better leadership, not destroy it.
To both arms, faculty and department alike, settle your disagreements like people who serve a common constituency. The students do not care which arm of government is right. They care whether their union works.
You have one semester left to prove that last semester’s crisis was a lesson learned and not a pattern set. Students are watching, and this time, we are asking for performance, not press releases about resolved conflict or rebuttals.
