This archive report was first published on 15 August 2019.
On August 22nd, 2019, Moi University was set to hold its 38th graduation ceremony, but 13 students had other plans. They had filed a petition to stop the ceremony, citing missing marks that had left them out of the graduation list.
The students, who enrolled at the university between 2015 and 2016, should have graduated last December. However, the graduation was pushed to August 22nd, 2019, due to lecturers' strikes. They alleged that some lecturers had willingly failed to release their marks to quietly push for their pay and allowances, with the most affected faculty being the School of Business and Economics.
The students blamed the university for neglecting them and taking them for granted, even after intervention by the Ministry of Education. They claimed that their marks for Editing and Publishing Skills, a unit they had taken in their third academic year (2016/2017), were not reflecting in the students' portals.
The students accused the university of violating their constitutional rights, citing Article 27, which guarantees every person the right to non-discrimination. They questioned the criteria used to exclude them while some of their classmates were included in the list.
However, the university management denied the allegations, stating that many of the aggrieved students had huge fee balances and missing marks. The students denied this claim, affirming that they had paid their university fees as and when required, sat for their exams as and when required, and handed in their project work by the deadline set.
According to the Moi University's Public Relations Officer, Patricia Cherambos, it was too late for the students to be listed for graduation. But the students' hopes remained high that the university would reverse the decision and work against next week's deadline to put them in the list.
