Reporter’s Log: Northern Caribbean University
Day 1: Oct 24, 10:15 am
I linger for a bit at the Aston Tai Centre across the street from the NCU main campus. It’s still NCU property, but detached. It’s where a lot of the campus’ business activity takes place. While looking around the bookstore, I run into a friend. She asks what I’m doing there. I say browsing. She says she is going over to the campus. I say I am too.
There is a female security guard at the NCU front gate. I raise my hand and gesture hello to her. She doesn’t stop me or my friend, who is a student, to show an ID, which is the policy. I ask my friend how that could be possible. The gate is narrow and it’s designed only for foot traffic. The guard is pretty close to the pedestrians.
My friend explains that I caught the window. Any time after 10 in the mornings, the guards are lax, because most of the traffic has passed. Until about 1:00 in the afternoon, they’re pretty easy to get by.
I am now on the campus. It’s like any other, students all around. I blend in easily. I go to the Business Department and I am hanging around in the lounge. Here I am sitting among a group of students who come here every day. They all know each other, but no one knows me. They don’t ask. I am there for fewer than 15 minutes, when I hear my name. I try not to look too startled. I return to jotting. I hear my name again.
I see it’s another friend. A long lost one at that. She is in that department. I am in. Somebody knows me, which must mean I am a student. I ask her if she feels secure on the campus. Without hesitation, she says “Yeah, yeah”.
11:00 am
I am in a class – Intermediate Financial Management. The lecturer comes in. I am sitting pretty close to the front. He doesn’t ask me anything. He says a prayer and proceeds to teach the class, which has about 25 people. I take out my notebook, not sure of what I will write.
He asks the class to turn to chapter nine. The person sitting to my right has left a textbook on the desk, so I turn to chapter nine. Weighted Average.something about Debt Costs. I am completely lost. He writes an equation on the board. I write it down: WACC= Wd Rd (1-T) Wps Rps+ Wcc+Rs. As I look up from my book: “Are you in this class?” It’s the student to my left. I gesture something that really has no meaning. I position my hand like I’m about to salute, but don’t bring it to my head, and I wag it a little. She says ‘Ok,’ but she looks bemused.
More equations keep coming up. By this time, the person to my right has returned, and is hogging her book. “Do you want to share [my textbook]?” It’s the bemused girl again. She pushes her textbook toward me a little. I hurriedly say no. Then I try to retract it by asking what page the lecturer is on.
The class drags on. Even the lecturer realises this. But he begs the class to stay with him. He then starts to rant about black nations not understanding the principles of business. He has the class’ attention again.
12:15
The class is scheduled to end in five minutes and the register starts going around. I don’t want it to come to me before I leave. And I don’t want to draw attention to myself by leaving prematurely. But if the register comes to me and I don’t sign, Miss Bemused and the lecturer will see. I slip out as the lecturer goes to the back to talk to somebody and the first group of people who sign the register are leaving. Whew!
12:30
I decide to go into the student bathrooms. There is no water in the pipes. I go to another one. I see two girls. I ask if there is no water in the toilets either. One of them explains that I can use containers to lift the water from drums at the door.
I wonder if my ignorance of this practice isn’t a clear tell that I don’t belong. I wait for them to say it, even to ask. But they say nothing. I walk around the campus some more. I go to the United Student Movement Office. I use the bathroom there. I hang out in the lobby. I see someone pass, whose conversation I later overhear. He is some sort of sports student executive.
At around 1:15 pm I leave the campus.
3:24 pm
I am in a taxi that plies the Mandeville to Knockpatrick route. NCU is on the way. Many taxis just go to NCU. Someone in the car is going on the campus. I wonder if they will ask the person who the driver is going to drop off to show an ID or something. We pass through the first security gate, no question. When we get to the second gate. The driver cracks his window, as it is raining: “Drop off, bredda,” he says to the guard, who nods. In again.
I hop out of the car when it stops to let off the student. I see a big meeting in progress in an auditorium. I peek. All the people there are wearing blue ID cards and I see the president of the college, Herbert Thompson.
I see a sign on the door of what I learn to be the student finance office that says there will be a staff meeting from 2 o’clock. I hang around the campus some more. I see an associate, who is on her way to the continuing education office. I go with her, chit chatting along the way. I ask her if she feels secure on the campus. She says she does, because people are always everywhere so if anything serious is to happen, it must be in a really secluded area.
I later return to the vicinity of the meeting. It’s over. The office of student finance, where students pay bills, or settle matters on their accounts, is now open.
I go in, sit there for a while. None of the employees asks me anything, and the traffic is not heavy. I walk around the campus some more and leave.
Day 2 Oct 25
6:15 pm
The campus is scanty at this hour, so I think the guards must be checking IDs. It’s been raining and it’s dark. I still decide to take my chances. I enter through the gate designed for foot traffic. I am not stopped. In again. There aren’t many students on campus. I learn that this is partly so because the evening students are on a break until Monday, October 30.
I decide to try to get into the library, which is usually one of the most secure points on a university campus. I have to leave my bag at a ticketing counter, so I do that. I have to take out my journal, my laptop, my steno pad, my recorder and my ID. I go into the library and there are two workers stationed on either side of the entrance. One is a little distracted by a couple people. I take on the cool look and walk past them. In again. Once, in high school, I had tried to go there. It was harder then.
I go into the Ralph Burgess Reading Room. It’s small. A few students are there. A staff member soon comes in and I am sure I have been caught. She asks if the air-conditioning is working, someone mutters something and she’s off. I take a few pictures, the students think I’m snapping them, but they don’t ask anything. I return to the lobby. One of the workers is now missing from the post. I’m hanging around in the lobby and somebody asks me: “Where is,” might have been “Hardy?” I say “I don’t know.” She moves on.
Tomorrow, NCU has chapel, a large almost two-hour assembly that is mandatory. I vow to try and get in.
Day 3: Oct 26
9:25 am
According to my friend’s theory, this falls within the time that security at the NCU front gate is tight. There are two guards, not one like on my first day, but they are relaxed.
In again.
With no clear aim, I walk up to a lecture theatre entrance. Two girls are going in. I pretend I am with them. The door is aluminium and there are no windows to the direction I’m coming from. I can’t see inside the room. As one of the girls in front opens the door, I hold it long enough to see that there is someone standing at the door. “Is where oonu going, waltzing into class at dis time…?” a robust woman asks. It appears she knows them. But I don’t know if she is talking to me as well. I wonder if she knows everybody in the class, because she is standing at the door like an enforcer. Time is winding down. I can’t hold the door open too long. But she won’t move. I let go of the door and walk away.
9:50 am
I walk down to Cedar Hall, the male dormitory. There are guys everywhere. I try to look busy by being on my cell phone. Someone behind a desk is staring me down. Some of the guys, gathered around a television, are looking too. I feel it. They know I don’t belong. I knit my brow like there’s been a huge misunderstanding, carry on the cell phone conversation, make a u-turn and walk out.
2:03 pm
Chapel is scheduled to start at 2:00 pm. I get in the front gate as usual and make my way to the ‘gynatorium’. On my way there, I see someone I know. “What you doing here?” he asks. In the past two days, I’ve only heard that question from people I know. I mumble something and hurry off.
When I get to the ‘gynatorium’, I see people handing out programme booklets that read “Honours Convocation”. They’re having a ceremony to congratulate students who have made the honour roll.
“People receiving honours sit in the middle, all others to the far left or the far right,” a woman at the door instructs. I stand close to the door in case I want to get out. In a few minutes, I see her coming toward me. I think this is it.
“You don’t want to sit?” she asks.
I shake my head. She seems slightly bothered.
The programme begins with the singing of the school song, the Alma Mater. I panic briefly. I don’t know the words. I assume the posture, try to look cool as if I know the words and just don’t want to sing them. I don’t have to do this for long as they’re printed at the back of the programme. But I just mouth them because I don’t know the tune.
The programme proceeds smoothly. President Herbert Thompson introduces the guest speaker, Ethlyn London, executive director of the University Council of Jamaica. I decide to leave in the middle of her presentation.
A guard is leaning on the door, her hands across the handles. I don’t know what to do. I knock gently. She doesn’t move. I knock a little harder. She moves and opens the door. Whew! I walk off the campus for the last time.