8
UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 6 AUGUST, 2017
OUTGOING
As he opened his notebook,
I was struck by the neat,
cursive, rounded script. That single page communicated to
me a fastidious, organized, serious character. Though I am
no hand-writing expert, my impressions were confirmed in
the conversation that followed.
After 14 years, Sir George Alleyne officially ended
his role as Chancellor of The UWI, making way for the
new Chancellor, Mr. Robert Bermudez, who assumed the
position on July 16. With ten days left before he demitted
the office he has held since 2003, Sir George sat down to
answer some questions I had outlined to him beforehand
– and that’s how I saw his notes.
Sir George has had a distinguished career in medicine:
as practitioner, as academic, as administrator and policy
maker. He will turn 85 in October and as a staff member
observed, he is “disturbingly spry.” He has held leadership
positions in the world’s most influential health bodies: the
World Health Organization and the Pan American Health
Organization. Before becoming Chancellor, he was Director,
and when he became Chancellor they made him a Director
Emeritus. Recognition for his services tomedicine had come
in 1990 with a knighthood, and in 2001 with the Order of
the Caribbean Community, why did he step outside of the
‘healthy’ world?
“If you went to university at the time I did you would
never lose the love for the university. It probably is the same
way now. I can tell you those persons who were at my time at
the university; we becameWest Indianized at the university.
People of my generation at the university developed a deep
and abiding feeling for the institution. So in a way I never
really left the institution,” he said, as he made the absurdity
of my question delicately clear.
“Who could refuse beingChancellor of one’s university?”
Given that the statutes of The UWI do not explicitly
define the Chancellor’s role, and that each university has
its own, I asked him to outline what it has meant to him.
“I took the trouble of looking up a paper that had
been put to [University] Council about some of the roles
at the institution. I can’t tell you that I would have followed
them all, but there are certain ones that stood out and were
probably more important for me than others” he said.
“The number one is leadership. You are the titular head
of the university and you have to project a positive image of
the institution in all you say or do, in various fora,” he said,
adding that it was also important to stress its regional nature.
“The one they pointed out as number one about
projecting a positive image of the university is terribly
important to me and that’s the one I have been acutely
conscious of over 14 years and I tried to do.”
The image of Sir George, resplendent in his robes,
solemnly shaking each graduate’s hand and saying
“Congratulations,” and the special “Well done, well done,
my sincere congratulations,” for first-class honours, is an
integral part of each graduation ceremony. He does not
deviate. It is his assigned role to preside over ceremonial
functions, the Council meetings, the graduation ceremonies.
“People would say that is ritualistic; and I agree. Well
I happen to like rituals… We all have personal rituals.
Family rituals help to bind families together and I think
that institutional rituals help to bind institutions together.
Rituals also tend to embody principles. For example at
graduation, I pay a lot of attention to the format of the ritual
because I think that rituals done sloppily are worse than no
rituals at all. I pay a lot of attention to the seriousness of
my greeting. It is not a flippant matter… I am all in favour
of the joy and exultation of the moment, but I believe that
unruly behaviour disturbs the beauty of the ritual,” he said.
It is not simply being old-fashioned. “You are saluting the
individual candidate. I took that very seriously because I
thought if a person has gone through the institution, to be
received into the company of those who have passed through
the institution before, I think that is a very important part.”
Students think so too. In the annual graduation survey,
when asked, “Please indicate your #1 graduation memory,”
the answer is repeatedly “shaking the Chancellor’s hand
while crossing the stage.”
Presiding over the University Council meetings is
another of the roles of the Chancellor. As much as he likes
ritual, he is not there as an ordained adornment. He takes
copious notes and meticulously checks minutes to ensure
accuracy.
“I know that some people believe that minutes should
be as skeletal as possible, should record the simple decisions
that were taken. I take it differently. I say that in 50 years’
time when people look back they should be able to see what
happened at Council. They need to have some idea of the
thinking behind the decisions,” he said.
Another of his roles as described by the Council was
“ensuring that the institution remains a regional institution,”
he said.
“When I became Chancellor it was ten years after the
previous Chancellor [Sir Shridath Ramphal] had established
a committee on the governance of the institution. I thought
it was an appropriate time to have another committee, so I
got a team of five or six of us to look at the governance,” he
said, and their first task was defining it.
“We defined it as those structures and processes and
traditional practices necessary for the optimal functioning of
the institution,” and they went about revising some of them.
“One of the things that struck me in the context of the
regionality of the institution was in the views of at least two
of the heads of government. They put the case to me quite
forcibly – unless the institution establishes a more credible
and visible presence in all of the contributing territories,
the university will cease to be relevant. And it would cease
to be a genuine regional institution.
To Do th
Right Th
The grace and gravitas
of Sir George Alleyne
B Y V A N E I
Sir George Alleyne
with his family at
the official farewell
dinner in his
honour at The UWI
Cave Hill Campus
on April 26, 2017.
