EFF student command calls for a halt to online learning at universities

The EFF student command wants online lectures to be suspended by universities in solidarity with students protesting over fees.

“We vehemently reject the continuing of online teaching and learning amid the national shutdown and view it as discriminatory and insensitive towards the poor, indebted and underprivileged students who do not have means to register and to participate due to lack of resources, particularly gadgets and data,” it said in a statement.

“EFF student command would not be playing its role as a students' vanguard if we allow universities to go online in order to undermine a genuine struggle and those affected in order to serve students who are already privileged.”

An update from the senior executive team at Wits University on Wednesday said the latest learning management system reports indicated that unique weekly logins from March 8 to 14 totalled 30,678, and the average unique daily logins 22,148.

“Last week, about 89% of students logged in at least once. Faculty averages for students logging in at least once a week ranged between 81% and 97%.”

Wits had registered 97% of full-time students (36,332) by March 12. The target for 2021 is an average of about 37,500 full-time students with the closing date for undergraduate registrations on Friday.

“We remain committed to enabling as many students as possible to register, provided that these students have applied for the 2021 academic year, meet the academic requirements, and can be accommodated within the resources that we have available,” the team said in a statement.

TimesLIVE