Hello readers! I found 3 interesting articles in Le Mauricien newspaper of today. Guess what? They all talk about UoM, our dear University of Mauritius. Two of the articles do not flatter UoM, and the third is the interview of Miss Aartee Beekharry, actual president of the Student Union.

I’m sorry for the lack of quality of the pictures, it’s due to the crappy quality of my camera. I couldn’t get the article about the management of Cafeteria due to the page layout. Quite a good article, try to read it.

Alright, so my point is this: University has not even started, and it’s already receiving criticism! This is rather humorous, considering all the claims of “we are ready” already said by UoM management. Now, I’m eager to see what will actually happen when all the students flock in on the 11th. Let’s see!

As students, many of my friends and myself are not too reassured as to how the management will cope with the increase in students. It was estimated to have around 40% increase, but not this article comes and says that courses are canceled due to… lack of students. Lol?

Canceling courses is an abomination. Many students work through their HSC years with a view of what they want to do at Uni, and just as they set foot in there, they find their course canceled. Their options? Go to another university locally, or go abroad and add to the brain-drain of Mauritius. What about their already-paid fees? Who knows…

Another comical issue. If you read the article, apparently UoM needs to wait for orientation day to know “how many students registered for a course”. Ok, I may agree that O-Day represents the actual number of students that will attend the course, not those that registered and went elsewhere. (“mass registrations to land one uni seat, UoM as backup” strategy) But it’s still weird. I wonder what the “not enough students” mean. What’s the minimum number of students for a class to run?

Next, the cafeteria issue. I gotta agree, cafet sucks. No truly! There is nothing for me to eat there! (I’m veg). I’m not even sure if the “pain au chocolat” is actually veg, even if it’s mentioned on the window-display thing. There is still some vegetable pickles and bread, but still nothing much. There are loads of French cakes, gotta admit, but I doubt anybody will have a lunch on French Cakes, are they? (Napolitan lunches… *drool*). They could at least provide some good, hot meals. This would mean less students eating at MIE cafet, and more at UoM cafet. Let’s wait and see.

Note that the article actually deals with how the cafeteria is actually managed, not what food is served. You will see mentions of how the caterer and the VC are “close together”, and some other matters. Note that the complaints were made by the SU “viva voce” as commented by Le Mauricien.

The last article is about SU president’s interview. Makes a good reading material if you want to know a bit about what student union was doing, is doing and will do. Nothing really detailed, but ok, you still have some more info about SU. Happy Birthday SU, 37 years huh? (old!)

That’s the end of this post. Drop us some comments please, specially UoM students.