Presidential Candidate in the United Student Movement 2021 Elections, Ceejay Johnson.

Photo Credit: Jahmarley Waysome

Mandeville, Manchester- Presidential Candidate in the current United Student Movement (USM) Elections, Ceejay Johnson says if elected he plans to lobby for the removal of Jam Copyright Fees and General Fees.

In a statement written to the Hilltop Trumpet Johnson argued that during this ongoing pandemic students need to save on money. Therefore, he considers it unfair for students to be paying for fees they don’t use while learning in a virtual environment.

“I strongly believe that those fees could be geared toward something else as it relates to other fees pertaining to one’s education here at Northern Caribbean University. Also, I believe that those fees should be waived amidst the pandemic that we are now facing.”

According to the NCU Administration, the Jam Copyright fee enables students to utilize copyright resources both online and face-to-face without breaching copyright regulations, while, General Fees, now classified as Technology Fees, ensure students receive the best learning experience remotely.

Johnson said that if elected the next USM President he will be lobbying for these fees to be removed.

“I will ensure that I negotiate with student services and persons from finance to have them remove the fees. Why? Persons who are not on campus and do schooling from their homes are paying for these services and they’re not having access to them.”

Meanwhile, he further lamented that freshmen students who sat the Freshman Seminar Course should receive a grade instead of the letters ‘S’ and ‘U’ that were assigned to respective students.

According to the USM Academic Administration arm, ‘S’ means Satisfactory and ‘U’ means Unsatisfactory in this instance.

“I strongly believe that every student who did the course in the fall 2020 semester should receive an actual letter grade like an (A) etc. that will be contributed to their GPAs because it is rather unfair for a student to pay to do a course and it’s not of any value to them.”

He said the response given to students on the matter was not enough.

“Also, because of the lack of communication from the USM Vice President of Academic Administration 2020/2021 regime, persons who did the course, specifically the freshmen have no clue as to why they received that grade, and as such, when they reached out to the person, the person’s response was “There’s nothing that can be done at the moment about the situation.”

If elected President, Johnson says he plans to fix this issue.

“If elected… I am going to ensure that I work assiduously with the person who’s going to be in charge of running the academic aspect for students. So, if I have to advocate until I lose my voice I will but I am going to do so until the grades are being changed from an (S) or (U) to an actual grade…”

Johnson shared with our news team data that he gathered last month, which showed that 44% of students Strongly Disagreed with the decision made to use ‘S’ and ‘U’ as assigned grades for the Freshman Seminar Course, 6% Disagreed, 1% Strongly Agreed, 0% Agreed and 3% said maybe.

Students will head to the polls on March 16 to vote for their next USM President and Vice-Presidents.