Friday, 23 March 2012

Are we less informed or do we just don't care?

Ayanda Masondo, 20, a second-year UJ Public relations student from Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal, was found leaning against the door in her room, in the Benjemijn hostel, on the morning of Sunday, 19 March 2012 .

Paramedics were called, but they pronounced her dead at the scene.

Brixton police station spokesman Constable Michael Kgatle said there would be a judicial inquiry into Masondo’s death.

“At this stage an illegal abortion would appear to be the reason for her death. There was a lot of blood at the scene,” Kgatle said.

According to Ayanda’s friends, she had been ill for about a week before she died.

A friend to Ayanda was quoted by Sowetan as having said “She was such a quiet girl. We’re all incredibly upset by this,”

It is heart-breaking for a young lady like her to die while busy chasing her dreams. Adjusting one's life from high school to university is a big deal, any student needs support.

Its disturbing to know that Ayanda would resort to the decision she took when there are support services offered by UJ to help students cope with problems.

The Centre for Psychological Services and Career Development (PsyCaD) is one of the services that are available for students at all four campuses of UJ. The following services amongst others, are offerered by PsyCaD :
  • It runs a Peer Buddy group that helps students find their feet at the university;
  • It Offers counselling services for students with all kinds of problems, personal or otherwise;
  •  PsyCad offers various career services, advising students and linking them with prospective employers;
  • It offers highly professional and completely confidential, sympathetic and scientific support.
  • And should a student happen to experience a major life crisis, PsyCaD runs a 24 hour Crisis Line that is a phone call away.
Clealy these services are sufficient for students both academicaly and personally. The question I ask therefore is: are students not well informed about these services or are they simply ignorent towards them?

We need a solution for this problem very soon or else we will see many more students with potential drifting away.

15 comments:

  1. we are just ignorant and want to live to please people around us.Everyone think that abortion is an option because of different circumstance.For example Meshack Mavuso a well known actor at Isidingo also considered abortion for his girl friend in order to protect his image and marriage.

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    1. Well said Moimane, as far as I'm concerned, our celebrities have to lead by example - the youth look up to them.

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  2. this topic is a sensitive issue for most people, because they know someone or have personally gone through such a stressful situation. my question is that do you think the UJ image has once again suffered as a result of yet another loss of life on its campus grounds?

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    1. Ramaranka, indeed this can't be good for the image of UJ. To some extent UJ has a responsibility to ensure that students know where to find help when they need it. Perhaps enough is not being done about awareness campaigns. However, UJ can offer helpful services to students, but it can't hold them by hands and take them to such services. They also need to play their part. In the end, we all need to be responsible for our own actions.

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  3. i think uj should start a free abortion clinic

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    1. Clive, I think UJ should educate the students more about practising safe sex rather than providing free abortion! The primary role of every student is to study - sex and getting pregnant should not be an option!

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  4. Being silent won't solve anything, a good comminaction strategy need to be invited so that our people recieve courage, advise, and are also shown a good path to follow.

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    1. Indeed a good comm strategy needs to be invited, but like I said, the services that are provided by PsyCad seem to be enough to help students who are in need of support - perhaps we're simply ignorent and that's where the problem lies.

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  5. the information is there, it is just the ignorance of students, others do not go to seek for help because they think they will be judged.it is also the embarasment they feel that keeps them away from seeking help. asking for help on the wrong people or people who think they know where else they dont also contributes to such bad news and loss. its a pity that the name of UJ gets another bad free publicity.

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    1. That's a good point Nqwaba, surely UJ must start working hard on introducing ways that will make students to realise that such support services were designed especially for them and that they need to start making use of them. If not, we're likely to see UJ turning into a university of shame!

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  6. I think she should have known better, but then again we don't know what she was going through and what kind of situation she was in, however, it is indeed very sad to lose a young lady whilst chasing her dreams. We're not less informed, we just don't care.

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    1. Fie-Fie, "Only the pot knows how hot the fire is", it is true that we can talk about how wrong this decision was but we don't know what Ayanda was going through. All we can do is learn from this incident and not find ourselves in a similar situation.

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  7. Wow that is so sad! Why would you get pregnant then do an abortion? rether use contraceptives unlike comming murder :(

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  8. It is very bad what happened to her and the reason's behind the abortion, we will never. Something should be done to stop illegal abortions because they are not at all safe and in thios case, the abortion took two lives...

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  9. We will never really know the influence behind her decision. Two people were involved in this so lets not judge.

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