UCC: Court Reinstates 22 Students; Rewards Ghc220k Damages

The University of Cape Coast has been directed by the Cape Coast High Court to reinstate the 22 executives of the Atlantic Hall who were rusticated for their alleged role in the violence that erupted during the Oguaa Hall Week Celebration in May this year.

The clash which saw one person paralyzed was blamed on the executive as they are said to have defied the university’s statutes with regards to hall week celebrations by inviting students of the University of Ghana’ s Commonwealth Hall and others from the University Hall of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

The invited students were seen as masterminds of the attacks with properties including cars being vandalized in the process, aside injuries sustained by some inmates of the Oguaa hall.

Presiding Judge Kwesi Dapaah Friday upheld the argument of the students’ lawyer who had argued that the executives were being made scapegoats as they were not directly linked to the crime, and also that they were not given a fair hearing by the university. He disclosed they were rusticated before being invited to meet the disciplinary committee of the school.

Their images, he argued, were also pasted on the school’s notice board before they were invited to appear before the committee.

The university has since been slapped with a GHC220,000 cost as it is to pay GHC10,000 each to the 22 for the injustice done them.

Source: StarrFMonline