The Sunday Mail
Patience Chido Nhamburo – CCOSA Student
WHEN our parents send us away to universities and colleges to be equipped with the education that holds our future as better Zimbabweans who are to build a better Zimbabwe, how safe are we at these institutions?
Every now and then you are bound to come across an article in the Press of a student being abused by a lecturer or teacher at their school.
Students are being abused and driven into engaging in acts that are not part and parcel of their module.
What hurts the most is that students end up compromising themselves to meet the demands of these lecturers or teachers in order to pass with flying colours to please their parents or guardians.
It has now turned into an institution tradition that when a lecturer advances with a love proposal to a student and the student accepts the relationship, the student is guaranteed distinctions before they even sit for the examination.
And if the student turns down the proposal, it is then a guaranteed fail and a seat in the supplementary class no matter how good they are.
As we are far from home at these institutions, the closest we have amidst us to parents are our lecturers and teachers and they must be there to protect us and care for us just as our parents but the same people who are supposed to protect us are abusing us.
So how safe are we?
Students would greatly appreciate it if the Government could set a law against student abuse in institutions and moreover ban any culprit caught abusing any student from practicing in the education sector.
This law may then help in reducing the rate of student abuse in institutions and make the lecturers and teachers realise that we are all in these education institutions to be educated and not to be abused.
Student abuse should stop, we want to be safe in our schools, being around male and female lecturers. It’s up to all of us to act against it because as it is we are being abused, we are vulnerable because of materialistic things being offered to us by these heartless culprits in our society that we call elders.
We are not safe and we do not feel safe at all.
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