By Jenni Campbell, contributing writer
Nearly every head of government, politician, and public servant in the region studied at the University of the West Indies at one time or another. This highly credited institution is the reference point for captains of industries and the Bars and Benches in and beyond the Caribbean. The judges serving the Caribbean Court of Justice all take pride in their alma mater, the bulwark of regional achievement.
Wherever in the world there is a need for well-trained medical practitioners, UWI has a ready rollout of competent doctors, nurses, and other medical workers to fill the gap and overflow health services.
Internationally acclaimed social scientists and some of the brightest minds in academia read at the UWI. UWI does not wear short pants in the global family of tertiary learning. It has earned every stripe and honour it gets. So when this institution brings to the table a gender diversity policy that broadly and specifically serves the LGBTQI agenda, it is a deliberate deed that was subjected to serious thought and consideration.
The UWI Gender Policy is a framework for a supportive environment for all persons, inclusive of gender identities and sexual orientations, in all aspects of university life. This unrighteous policy claims to reflect UWI’s core values as stated in its 2022–2027 Strategic Plan. These values reject the biological evidence of a person’s assigned sex at birth and embrace the Satanic view of “I am whatever I feel’.
With a Faculty of Medical Science on its campus, UWI must say whether students in training are taught to physically identify other gender formations outside of the two which God created. This very dangerous policy places UWI on a pathway that leads to all sorts of contortions that go against the very fibre of human existence. What if a student no longer feels human but like a computer? Would UWI‘s all-embracing policy force all and sundry to identify that student as such?
While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with UWI creating an environment of support for all students, as the centre of research in the region, it must use the full force of its capabilities to help those in urgent need of medical intervention. Any man who thinks he is a woman, or vice versa, is crying out for help. Long before the LGBTQI mafia made it fashionable for men to think they are women, this condition was rightly diagnosed as gender dysphoria. There is a place and practice to address such abnormal behaviour.The response of the university, the highest place of learning, cannot be to compel the rest of the campus to accept this abnormality and adjust their behaviour accordingly.
This policy was in the making for six years and is only surfacing now. It was first drafted in 2017 by a gender policy steering committee and was revised and updated in 2022. The average UWI programme lasts for three years; hence, two cohorts would have entered and exited the campus while this seriously offensive policy was under consideration.
Long before 2017, the UWI had been complaining about a cash crunch. The COVID pandemic only worsened the situation as students stayed home and brought activities on campus to a complete standstill. A number of commercial operations at the UWI were severely hit as a result of the absence of students on the campus and therefore drying up that stream of income for the institution.
The UWI was running over a $1 billion deficit then. According to the St. Augustine campus’ annual report, total funding for the financial year ended July 2020 stood at TT$1,026.9 million. The report said that while government subventions stayed basically flat, tuition fees, special projects, and commercial operations were severely impacting its ability to fund itself.
Population demographics showed a declining number of students in the age cohort to enter university. This trend was expected to continue for the next five years. The much-celebrated UWI was in deep financial trouble and hitting rock bottom fast.
To halt the free-fall, UWI, the great problem solver, employed several strategies. They included freezing unfilled positions, staff reductions due to attrition, and slashing service contracts for part-time teaching staff from one year to nine months, among other things.
Donors were encouraged to increase their funding to bail out the bastion of regional learning. But donor funds often come with heavy conditionalities, some of which generally include the promotion of LGBTQ ideologies. So the decision to craft this controversial gender policy in 2017 coincides with the time when the money woes became apparent.
In September 2020, the UWI signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Open Society Foundations (OSF), one of the largest philanthropic organisations in the world. The MOU was signed by Vice-Chancellor of The UWI, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, and the President of the OSF, Ambassador Patrick Gaspard. OSF founder George Soros has donated over US$32 billion to help build open societies across the globe to promote democratic governance and human rights, which oftentimes include LGBTQI rights.
With donor funds pocketed, UWI declares itself an activist university with an anti-imperial agenda. The Gender Policy is billed to locate UWI as the vanguard, engaging in advocacy and producing transformative policy for social change. But not all change is good, and who requested this change anyway, and who will benefit from this change?
The people of the region have consistently rejected the LGBTQI agenda and lifestyle. So forceful is this rejection that battered and bruised gay operatives often use it as a ticket for migration. The UWI would understand that governments have struggled at the polls if they even suggested any such leaning.
In fact, one Jamaican Prime Minister, one of its noted alumni, has had to come out publicly and declare his sexual leanings because popular rumour labelled him as homosexual, and this was impacting his political future.
The UWI knew then and still knows now that the region is firmly rooted in Christian doctrine and Biblical beliefs and will not relent on this. Buggery is still a criminal offence in Jamaica, but UWI is promoting a policy that encourages the breaking of the law.
Despite its claim of creating an environment which is free from sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, among other things, for its nearly 50,000 student population across the five campuses, UWI’s advocacy is clearly for its funders. The focus is on the money and not much else.
While other universities are researching to find cures for longstanding diseases and ways to exploit the wealth of the earth for the benefit of their societies, the UWI is advancing a cause for money and against righteousness.
The tone of the policy is dictatorial, dismissive, unrelenting, and drastic. There appears to be no room for dissent, not even on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, belief, or religion. This is not the posture of a place of learning, but that of a henchman under strict instructions. Who is instructing the UWI? Could it be the same master who is instructing the CCJ and its judges, who are all graduates of the same school?
