When lecturers stay away

In response to Mark Sciriha's letter (April 14), the Kunsill Studenti Universitarji (KSU) would like to clarify some points.

While we understand and sympathise with the fact that cancelled lectures do occur and cause problems to students, we disagree with Mr Sciriha's comments that the Faculty of Laws is a "disgrace" and "makes students' lives harder". We have found that whenever there are cancelled lectures which we are not informed about the fault is not the faculty's but rather the fault of lecturers who often fail to inform the faculty and simply do not turn up for their lectures. It has also been the case in the past where certain lecturers inform the faculty just five minutes prior to a lecture that they will not be turning up. Obviously this is a state of affairs that should change and one that KSU is addressing.

As KSU we are often at loggerheads with the university authorities regarding a number of issues - including cancelled lectures. It is not the first time that KSU, following complaints by students, has reported to university authorities lecturers who failed to attend lectures. These complaints have been followed up by the university and KSU will keep up its commitment to voice student concerns on the matter.

Last October KSU launched their KSU Campus SMS service where students who signed up for the service receive lecture cancellations and other faculty-based information on their mobile.

KSU Campus SMS is a unique service where students can apply to receive various important notifications such as faculty notifications, student news, surveys, competitions, job opportunities, travel offers and much more via SMS. Through KSU, students at the University of Malta have become the first students in Europe and among the first in the world to be able to apply for such a service. To date almost 1,000 students have subscribed to the service. The aim of this service remains that of enhancing communication between the student and the university.

While we acknowledge that, unfortunately, we do not manage to send out notifications of every cancelled lecture, this is rarely the fault of the faculty - in fact, the Faculty of Laws has always informed KSU whenever they knew that a lecture was to be cancelled so that we could immediately inform the students concerned. It is when lecturers do not inform the faculty that the notifications are not sent out.

The Faculty of Laws has been one of the faculties which constantly make use of this service and, thus, help make students' life easier. Our records show that since October 2003 the Faculty of Laws has been the most responsive faculty to use KSU Campus SMS and the most messages that have been sent have been to law students.

As regards Mr Sciriha's very valid suggestion for notifications to be posted on the internet, KSU has been looking into this possibility for some time and this is due to be one of the specifications of our new website which will be fully functioning by October 2004. The Faculty of Laws has already informed us it will be willing to support such an initiative.

The KSU's education commission has been offering its help to all students who make academic complaints and this year has solved over 80 per cent of complaints received. We thus encourage students to contact us whenever they are faced with academic problems so that we will be able to follow them up with the university authorities.