Campus freedom and morality

By Caleb Mutua

While Ms. Mercy Keino’s death came as a bolt from the blue to her family and the students fraternity at the University of Nairobi, the circumstances that led to her death have turned out to be a can of worms.

The case takes a new twist every day.  However, it beats me how the friends she was partying with did not realize that she was missing until 12 hours later. I am also finding it difficult to understand how you go out with your cousin and she lets you go home alone, drunk! How the diseased threw caution to the wind and decided to drown herself in liquor and went ahead to exchange bitter words with a legislator whom she had met for the first time.

Students Organisation of Nairobi University (SONU) officials have accused the police of not doing their best and threatened to riot if there is no conclusive evidence. They also threatened to shame legislators and other government officials who pick and drop female students at the campus saying that it all comes to grief. Talk of the university of the students, by the students and for the students.

This got me thinking of life in campus after classes. There is sports mostly for regular students and of course clubbing and binge drinking that takes place in different joints, sometimes far from campus hostels.

In a more personal front, I think this whole thing boils down to morality. Because the university can hardly keep track of students’ life after class, it assumes that they are rational and will make informed decisions  when called to by situations or circumstances they find themselves in. Students should therefore avoid dicing with the devil by engaging on activities that put their health or their life into risk; at least if they still want to graduate.

First published in on 19th June 2011.