Cudjoe’s CEPEP University

Dr Selwyn Cudjoe’s campaign in the media is that too many Indian students are excelling in exams and gaining admission to UWI and TTIT and that Afro-Trinidadians are under-represented (Newsday August. 22, 2003). He therefore contends that race should be used as a criterion in the selection of students. Cudjoe sees Trinidad only from one ethnocentric perspective, however the issues he looks at are very selective. It is interesting to note Cudjoe’s relationship with the Coordinator of the Foundation Courses at UWI. Ms Merle Hodge plays an influential role in hiring lecturers of these courses, which are on Academic Writing for Different Disciplines. Her book “Knots in English” is required reading for all students taking these courses. [Interestingly Cudjoe’s Calaloux Publications is the publisher and distributor of this book]. The point in this example is that the university’s gate-keepers that have allowed this Indian admission at UWI are chiefly Africans. It is the grades and merit that have allowed Indians entry not race. 

Cudjoe’s racial admission recommendation however must equally apply to employment in all state enterprises. Accordingly, race must also be a criterion in the recruitment of workers at TSTT, Central Bank, Unit Trust, Port Authority, NALIS, etc. etc. Cudjoe argues that UWI and TTIT must “reflect the multi-racial nature of our society.” This too is the Maha Sabha’s and indeed all Indo-Trinidadians’ position.  We must not look after our own at the expense of the national community therefore on this issue Dr Cudjoe should be supported. But the rules must apply to all, at all times, and everywhere. If the issue is education, then let us also campaign for parity at COSTAATT.  This is a new Government Community College much like Wellesley College where Dr Cudjoe teaches Black Studies. The COSTAATT multi-campus colleges include NIHERST schools, San Fernando Technical Institute, John S. Donaldson Technical Institute, Government Technical Institute, Police Joint Services Staff College,and the Eastern Caribbean Farm Institute. Cudjoe does not care to reveal to the public that more than 80 percent of the staff and students at COSTAATT are non-Indians. 

There is the speculation that when Government opens its new University of Trinidad, given Cudjoe’s influence on the government, it is likely that U of T would be like another CPEPP, filled with party supporters with a degenerate standard like the Afro-Guyanaese Dictator Burnham’s University of Guyana. When Cudjoe writes that “a university education cannot be reduced to grades” one wonders what alternative measurements will be employed. Or is it that ethnicity will be the new matriculation. The real problem that Cudjoe does not want to address lies within himself and the community which he claims to represent. Cudjoe should desist from blaming everyone else for the problem. He cannot blame Indians for the underachievement of Afro-Trinboganians in education. After all, Africans have been, and still are, in control of the Ministry of Education since the birth of the PNM. The problem with African and education is essentially one of culture. In the United States, where Cudjoe lives and teaches, Africans tend to lag behind in schools, colleges and universities. Indians and Asians excel, moreso in medicine, computing and engineering. Africans are to be found in History, Sociology, Literature and Political Science. The UK-based Office of National Statistics recently stated “among men, Black Caribbeans were the least likely to have degrees (eight percent)” while Indians “are the highest performing among students of all groups in Britain”. [Indo-Asian News Service, London, August 13 2003] 

Superintendent Eugene White in Washington Township in the USA chastised Africans for their poor performance in school. The Boston Globe (March 28, 2003) reported him saying to black boys that they worry too much about clothes, jobs, and partying. Is this different in Trinidad? White, who is African-American, said that the statistics spoke for themselves. Only about 43 percent of black male students at North Central passed language arts and math in Indiana’s statewide testing for sophomores, compared with 88 percent of white students in 2001. And black males started last fall with an average grade of C or C-minus compared with the average for white students of B or B-plus. Cudjoe should perhaps turn his attention to the years African students spend before reaching University level. An analysis should be done on students who failed English and Maths in this year CXC. Cudjoe lauds the decision of Grutter v. Bollinger 288 F.3d 732 (6th Cir. 2002). Ironically a 1994 study by the University of Michigan reveals that its policy of achieving racial diversity through the use of racial preferences significantly increases racial tension, isolation, and conflict on campus. The study was recently brought to public attention by Chetly Zarko’s article in the Wall Street Journal (May 16, 2003). The study’s findings and conclusions are at sharp variance with documents prepared by the University after its race-based admissions policies were challenged in 1997 in two cases now before the US  Supreme Court.

These widely promoted documents include UM Professor Patricia Gurin’s expert report, which Michigan submitted as evidence and relied on heavily in both cases.   Recenlty however the US Supreme Court struck down [June 23, 2003] Michigan’s undergraduate admissions system, which awarded 20 points to minority applicants in the admissions process — out of a possible 150 — based solely on their skin color. The court, however, upheld the University of Michigan’s law school admissions policy, which assigns no numerical value to an application based on his or her race, but weighs race significantly in the admissions process. Those opposing Michigan’s race-based admission policies include a long list of prominent US organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League. Clearly the legal and moral debate on this issue is not closed as Cudjoe implies. The real agenda of social engineering for political purposes includes an assault on UWI’s Indo-Trinidadian Principal — Dr Bhoe Tewari. The recent impasse between the doctors and the government has been labelled as political in nature merely because Indians have dominated the medical profession. Cudjoe hopes by imposing these ethnic standards there will be a shifting in the demographics of lawyers, doctors, engineers and other professionals.