It seems that the bet on the first semester remedial exams that started in the faculties of medicine and pharmacy today, Thursday, coinciding with the start of the new academic year, to avoid the specter of a blank year, is on its way to “failure”, as Hespress observed in front of the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy in Rabat a weak turnout of students to the examination halls, which student representatives said was “a translation of the success of the boycott by more than 94 percent.”
It seems that the “boycott” is largely the prevailing reality in other faculties of medicine and pharmacy, according to what Hespress learned from student representatives in these faculties, which confirms, according to them, that the exceptional session of the second semester exams, which Miraoui and the deans promised to those who will take these exams, did not “tempt” the students to abandon the urgent demands, stressing that “the exams must be signed with a memorandum of agreement in which the ministry pledges to respond to all these demands.”
The exceptional session did not tempt students
In front of the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy in Rabat, Hespress spoke to Badr Boudi, a member of the National Committee for Medical and Pharmacy Students, who said that “the boycott rate at the Rabat Faculty exceeded 94 percent, and in the rest of the faculties it was no less than 90 percent, and for us it is a natural and inevitable result, because the legitimate and just demands that prompted medical and pharmacy students to boycott the previous stations are still pending.”
“The continuation of the boycott is a message from the students to the officials and the public opinion as a whole, which means that finding a way out of this crisis will not be done by tempting them with an exceptional session if they pass the remedial exams, but rather by responding to the urgent demands, foremost among which is lifting the sanctions on suspended students, reversing the granting of zero points and dissolving the councils, and adapting the pedagogical engineering to the decision to reduce the years of training, with the exception of the first five batches,” Boudie added, stressing that “the students will continue to announce the boycott paper until these demands are adhered to and crowned by signing a memorandum of agreement to build trust between them and the ministry.”
Boudie wondered: “Do the ministry officials, by giving priority to exams without listening to the students’ appeal to respond to the rest of the demands, have a serious intention to avoid the specter of a blank year, which we, as students, have made significant efforts to dispel by accepting the government proposal on the condition that the aforementioned outstanding points are responded to, and by constantly expressing our readiness to sit at the dialogue table to discuss ways to resolve the issue?”
“Close proportions in Oujda”
Bilal Rabai, representative of the National Committee of Medical and Pharmacy Students in Oujda, said that “the boycott of the exams scheduled for this morning at the college concerns the fourth year of the medical department, and was boycotted by 98.7 percent of students according to what we learned from the WhatsApp communication groups for college students,” adding that “this is confirmed by our presence in the field, where those who came to the exam halls were counted on the fingers of one hand.”
Rabai added, in a phone call with Hespress, that “the initial surveys we are conducting show that about 99 percent of students at other levels are inclined to boycott the exams scheduled for them at other times of the day.”
The “soreness” of Minister Abdel Latif Miraoui’s avoidance of answering Hespress’ questions is, according to the same spokesperson, “one of the indicators of the ministry’s disregard for our file, which contributed to pushing students to boycott the exams,” adding that “this disregard is mainly represented in not meeting the main demands that pushed students to boycott these exams.”
Elaborating on this point, Rabai said that “talking about an exceptional session for the benefit of students who will take these exams remains absurd, as long as a memorandum of agreement has not been signed in which the ministry commits to implementing the other demands related to exempting the first five batches from the decision to reduce the years of training and cancelling suspensions with clear decisions and retracting the granting of zero points.”
The spokesman added that “the vast majority of pharmacy students have expressed their acceptance of the government proposal since last June, and what is driving them to continue the boycott is not a free impulse or a desire to show solidarity with medical students, but rather because the ministry has not yet shown its readiness to sign a memorandum of agreement with them as a guarantee of its commitment to its pledges.”
It is worth noting that the Faculties of Medicine and Pharmacy had confirmed in previous notifications regarding the remedial exams for the first semester what Minister Abdel Latif Miraoui had pledged to the dialogue committee representing the majority groups, which is leading a new mediation in the file regarding enabling “students who will take the remedial exams for the first semester scheduled for September 5, 2024 to take other sessions during the second semester.”
However, members of the Student Committee of the various faculties of medicine and pharmacy who spoke to Hespress previously confirmed “their continued adherence to the priority points, which concern the suitability of pedagogical engineering to the decision to reduce the years of training to six years and exempt the first five batches from the first to the fifth year from this decision, and issuing clear administrative decisions to cancel suspensions and withdraw the granting of zero points,” provided that “the ministry’s commitments to these demands are included in the minutes of the agreement.”
While it seems that the mediation recently launched by the Dialogue Committee of the majority groups to bring the viewpoints of the two parties of the crisis closer together, is heading towards the same fate as the parliamentary mediation of July, as the student representatives stress their refusal to involve parents and guardians in any initiative to resolve this issue.
