Sex for grades: Don’t needlessly ‘scapegoat’ Gyampo – ASEPA boss to UG

The Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA) has urged authorities of the University of Ghana not unfairly punish Professor Ransford Gyampo over the BBC’s sex for grade documentary.

According to him, the Committee that probed the allegations against the political science lecturer by the BBC could not establish his guilt.

“My investigations reveal that the Committee could not establish the allegations of sexual harassment and sex for grade against Prof Gyampo and discredited the credibility of the video.

“It has been revealed that the video was carefully edited to shield the BBC reporter and to implicate the Professor. In this regard, Abigail Lamptey’s efforts to trap, lure and elicit a certain kind of conversation were all cut out from the video in a way that creates an impression that she was a passive contributor,” he wrote in a statement.

He added:” It will be interesting for anyone to prove misconduct on the part of the Professor who was engaged in a private conversation with a non-student and never knew he was secretly being recorded without his permission. If the one who innocently spoke without knowing was being recorded could be asked to answer questions on charges of misconduct, then how about the one who went on a pre-meditated mission to trap, record, doctor the recording, and deliberately put the video in the public domain? We should be careful not to set needless precedents, else in future, a frosty relationship between a lecturer who is a tenant and his land lord on rent matters can even become a subject for a charge of misconduct. But this wasn’t the intention of those who framed the Statute”.

Meanwhile, the a fact-finding committee set up to investigate the issue by the university has found prima facie evidence of breaches of the University’s Code of Conduct and Statutes and has recommended that the matter be brought before the University’s Disciplinary Committee.

The Committee, chaired by Justice Vida Akoto-Bamfo, a retired Supreme Court Judge, noted in its report to the Vice-Chancellor that there is prima facie evidence of misconduct against Professor Gyampo and Dr. Butakor contrary to Paragraph 6.4 of the Code of Conduct for Academic Staff of the University of Ghana, which stipulates that Academic Staff shall at all times comport themselves in ways that will enhance their image and that of the University.’