Wednesday marks a special day for my alma mater, University of Ghana, which has declared 11th October, a Wear UG Day, as part of the 75th anniversary celebrations.
I urge all past and present students of Legon to comply and assert our proud identity, our umbilical links with the nation’s premier university. It simply means grab your UG anniversary wear, and flaunt it with pride.
While we wear Legon, I draw attention on this occasion, to strides the university has made towards gender equity. It’s hard to believe the lightning speed this is happening. The rapid growth in female enrollment; the almost overnight mutation towards a 50-50 gender parity, and the female administrative dominance are heartening. This has impacted gender relations in all spheres of university life.
Time indeed flies. Only yesterday, Volta, the only female hall was swarmed with an all-male cadre of front desk personnel called ‘porters.’ Men monopolizing the front desk, with virtual access to female privacy? At that time, this was perfectly normal to the Legon mindset.
On hindsight, we realize how bizarre it was running a mixed gender university with only men at front desks, in charge of security, custodial services; and all-male heads of department, all-male deans, all-male provosts etc.
In all this, there was one embarrassing secret Legon has kept all these years about gender spaces, which is discussed in whispers only. And I am whispering this: the senior common room of Legon Hall, where Hall fellows relax and interact, was out of bounds to women over a long period until the mid 1990s.
What do I mean? There was gender-based apartheid in the inner perimeters of the common room. The farthest any lady could go, was to the khebab stand then overlooking the main avenue, where ladies could quickly order a stick or two of khebab, and tip toe their way back.
Ei Legon! Time flies oooo. How that tradition started and lingered at the premier university, within the premier hall of residence, without triggering an Occupy Legon protest, has been a puzzle. But oral traditions quietly whisper a nasty incident involving a Hall Fellow’s lady guest, versus his better half. (In other words, side chick versus front chick, but please don’t quote me.)
The clash was so bitter and scandalous that hall authorities in their fury, must have waved an index finger, banning women from the hallowed premises with immediate effect! Just imagine the authorities yelling in fury, ‘The senior common room is henceforth out of bounds to women; or else there will be a show down!’
I was appointed lecturer at the University while the ban was on, and it sounded strange to us Sarbah hall fellows who bragged of being pioneers in mixed gender relations. But it was perhaps no news outside campus.
In the late 1980s while I wielded a restless pen in the media I did a story about the State Fishing Corporation whose premises at the Tema Harbour, hosted a conspicuous wall inscription: ‘Out of Bounds to Women,’ apparently directed at intrusive ‘kalabule’ fish traders under the military government.
I kept making noise about this until the shameful inscription disappeared. It was not surprising that inscriptions on ‘tro tro’ vehicles those days, included my favorite example: ‘Fear Woman and Play with Snake.’
That gender bigotry at Legon Hall, unbefitting of a prestigious public university, has since been dismantled, and women can now freely interact in all public spaces at the University. This was made easy by the university’s decision, to declare Legon Hall and Akuafo Hall available for mixed gender occupancy in the 1990s, joining Mensah Sarbah hall.
Meanwhile, the university started a major acceleration in female enrollment to keep pace with improved enrollment of girls in primary and secondary schools. Besides this, the University itself had decided to adopt gender sensitive policies that would make it more hospitable to women, and that included affirmative action in women’s enrollment.
Significant progress in women’s enrollment started in the 1990s, progressed steadily, and has reached its peak as I write. Here are the facts: female students were 15% in 1971, progressed to 19% in 1981; 23% in 1991; 31% in 1999; 34% in 2001, 41% in 2009, etc.
In 2020, student female presence surged to 48.7%, and as I write it has hopped to 49.8%, achieving an almost 50-50 gender parity. That is a revolution for which the conservative University deserves huge congratulations.
Legon has gone beyond that. It now makes proud headlines across the subregion with an all- female top tier administrators: Chancellor, Chair of Governing Council, Vice Chancellor, Registrar, Director of Finance, Director of Internal Audit, Dean of Students, Director of Public Affairs, etc., believing of course that these are also merit-based.
To the Chancellor, Governing Council, Vice Chancellor & Management, faculty, staff, students, and alumni of Legon, I say CONGRATULATIONS. It’s been 75 years of hard work, and princely leadership in tertiary education. Let me quote the first Principal of the University College, David Mowbray Balme, at his departure ceremony in 1957. His rather intimidating caution has nevertheless, been a great guiding principle:
It is now beyond doubt that we can make this a first rate university… If Ghana gets a second rate or bogus institution, let it not be the one at Legon. If it is, I shall come back and haunt you.
‘Fellow Ghanaians,’ please celebrate with us and donate generously to our cause while we wind down on our 75th anniversary celebrations. Long Live Legon!
By Kwesi Yankah
kwyankah@yahoo.com
