Students at the University of South Africa (Unisa) have had a difficult time trying to enjoy their graduation ceremonies as they are delayed, but the institution has stated that the new dates for postponed events are coming soon.

“Unisa Management approved the new dates for all Graduation Ceremonies that were postponed, and the University is in the process of communicating these dates to all identified students via SMS messages and to their myLife E-mail addresses. The process of communication will be concluded by 7 April 2022,” the University writes.

“The University apologises for any inconvenience caused and congratulates all students on the completion of their qualification.”

What’s unique about this situation is that it has nothing to do with the pandemic. During the height of COVID-19 many if not most universities locally and abroad cancelled ceremonies in an effort to keep students, attendees and staff safe.

While the pandemic is still far from over, universities have started to host these ceremonies again but, in Unisa’s case, these have been disrupted by protest action.

We covered this situation earlier in March when Unisa restarted ceremonies after the protests were apparently brought to a resolution.

The problem was that many students were left in the lurch, unsure when or even if their ceremony would still be happening.

This confusion and lack of clarity seems to have persisted since then, which is why Unisa has needed to make this announcement today.

While this seems to be satisfactory for now students once again have valid problems with Unisa which they have started to express on Twitter. Issues such as exam results, registrations, allowances and more are all brought up.

Some students are also pointing out that the new ceremony dates may not be ideal, so hopefully those communicated by tomorrow will be satisfactory.

[Image – Gillian Callison on Pixabay]