The historic student protest against conditions at the Hunter J Francois Library was over for a week and was probably forgotten by most students and staff, but principal of the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College just couldn’t let it go. One week after students engaged in the protest to urge administration to take speedy action to reopen the Hunter J Francois Library, she held her first press conference, reopening a can of worms that no one is truly prepared to deal with.
First, she stated the financial and technical problems that forced the college to close the library. Then, Beverly Ann Lansiquot, a former nurse and current top dog at the island’s top educational institution, flexed her muscles. She singled out one category of students as the real troublemakers behind St Lucia’s first student protest since St Mary’s College boys forced caretakers of their school improvement fund to fix their school rather than use the money for real estate development.
“There are many negative elements in operation at the college at this time,” she told reporters, unabashedly. “But this principal will not hesitate and I do not fear having to address the difficult challenges. That’s what leadership is about. I welcome the challenge. It is unfortunate the students did this, but I think it reflects on them. The college has done everything it can to provide resources for them to do their work. As we speak, we are working with other stakeholders, other donors. We are looking at a new building to expand spaces, but these things require money. We are doing all we can to access funding. We are partnering with friendly nations to do that. So I do not see the student protest as any reflection of my leadership.”
According to Lansiquot, the protest was not the work of the students council, but of ‘negative elements’ in one division in particular. In spite of the involvement of student leaders from at least four of the school’s six divisions, Lansiquot targeted one set of culprits.
“The division of teacher education was not involved in this protest,” she insisted. “Health sciences was not involved. Agriculture was not involved. Very few from the division of technical education. Why is that? It’s obvious that services have been available to students to get their work done. But this was not satisfactory to the division of arts, sciences and general studies. I think that the reading room has been used a lot to hang out. This is exactly what they said when we met with them and told them all the measures that were put in place. The library is not a place to hang out. It’s there for quiet study.”
In addition to singling out the ‘A Level’ students as the main movers behind the first student protest of the new millenium, Lansiquot had some other criticisms and accusations for students of the college.
“The very same students who are protesting now,” she told reporters, last week, “are responsible for—what is the percentage loss at the library? Twenty percent? Twenty percent of the books have been stolen. They are being thrown out of the window because they want to keep the book as long as they can or they don’t want to pay a fee if they are late. This is the reality. There are many students who are responsible. Unfortunately there are some students who are irresponsible, creating more problems, so we cannot open the windows of the library because it means more and more of the resources of the library will go out the window. This is our reality. We need to be able to control the resources we have allocated to the library.”
Lansiquot maintains that the college administration has done everything it could to communicate the gravity and complexity of the situation to student leaders.
“We met with the students twice,” she said. “We met with the faculty once. I was out of the island. So I cannot account for what happened on the day of the protest but in my opnion, there were peoiple who were determined to make an issue of this. They exercised their right. But this action by the students was not the students council. This was the division of arts, sciences and general studies. The division that led this was arts, sciences and general studies. I think they were demanding that we open the reading room so they can hang out. The college will not open the reading room until we are satisfied that the environment is conducive to the health and safety of the students and the staff.”
In answer to rebuts from student leaders who argue that the longer the library stays closed and in disrepair, the more damage and costs will be incurred, Lansiquot quipped, “These were the student experts sharing this information. Maybe I can repeat: reading room is on the first floor. The books the students need have been moved to the second and third floor. We have been working on this for weeks. The books have been there for weeks.”
In answer to complaints from students that the temporary provisions made by the college are totally inadequate to meet students needs, especially with exams approaching, Lansiquot retorted, “It is adequate because it is what we can do right now.
“If you go to the library now,” she added, “you will find that there are no students there. The library remains open and yet the students are not accessing the materials. It may not be the most convenient situation, but it is the best situation at this time. And it would be irresponsible to subject the students to health risks just because they are protesting. The college is not about responding to protest action and taking action just to pacify the students. There are larger responsibilities. If the students contract an infection at this college, they’ll take it home to their family members. We have a very strict protocol approved by NEMO and the ministry of health and we had to present it to the ministry of education on our H1N1 protohttp://stluciastar.com/content/wp-admin/media-upload.php?post_id=8967&type=image&TB_iframe=true&width=640&height=718cols. Part of what we are doing is trying to prevent students from congregating in areas with poor air quality so they will not get the infection.”

In spite of all of this, the principal still could not give even the vaguest hint of when the Hunter J Francois Library would be repaired and open.
The problems of leaking and air quality have been building up for years. The first problem is the design of the building—a flat concrete roof that now leaks and a very wide reading room which makes it difficult for the air conditioning system to adequately service the area. When the library was constructed many years
ago, there were four air conditioning units placed on the roof. Some are too far away from the areas they were servicing, so in spite of running properly, they were ineffective. The concrete roof has been compromised through poor maintenance over time resulting in leaks through the roof, through the ceiling, onto the books, onto the floor. The result is mold and fungus developing inside the room and a decline in air quality. The solution matrix includes new roofing, new air conditioning and a partitioning of the reading room of the library on an east-west access. No one doubts that it will take months to achieve.
“To invest in the air conditioning, we need to meet minimum standards—a minimum of forty feet from where they are to serve,” Lansiquot explained. “Additional structures must be put in place to accommodate the new structures, like the compressors. However, there is an additional problem, the issue of the leaks on the roof.”
Students questioned why all of this was not done over the summer vacation when it would cause the least disruption.
Lansiquot answered, in her press conference, “Why wasn’t it done ten years ago? This really has been a longstanding problem.”
For Lansiquot, the question of repairs leads to the question of funds, which is another problem that could directly affect the students.
“There’s really very little in terms of capital allocations we get to run this college,” she said. “A lot of the capital works we undertake actually comes from students fees. We operate in century old buildings with stringent regulations about how it is maintained. The height of the library from the floor is really very high. It’s not for want of trying to get estimates to do these repairs . . . we are finding that in all the months the Vice Principal has been trying to get estimates, we only got two. This is not an easy job. It’s because of the complexity of the problem. This may have contributed to why efforts to address the problem in a more timely manner did not happen.
SALCC’s principal maintains that it is a difficult job to do what needs to be done. Lansiquot says the college is attempting to address the issue in “the best way we can.”
“Using the meager resources the college has for a quick fix is not the most frugal thing to do in this time of our economic situation,” she said. “It would require at least a quarter million dollar project. “Replacing all the air conditioning, a roof now has to be put on because efforts to correct the concrete roof have not worked. we have to replace the molded ceiling work, clean the environment, change the carpeting. I am sure the students would not want us to increase fees by a representative amount
when you look at the magnitude of the expenditure. All we ask is that students and staff work with us. As principal, I will not subject any faculty member, staff member or student to an environment that is unsafe.”