26 pregnant university students suspended

By Hope Mafaranga, Isaac Nuwagaba & John Masaba

Twenty-six girls have been suspended from Uganda Christian University’s Kabale affiliate college for conceiving before marriage. They were found to be pregnant during random tests.  

The girls accuse the university of suspending them without hearing them out.

However, Godwin Kiiza, the Dean of Students, maintains the students who were suspended were admitted as single students and they are not supposed to be engaged in a sexual immorality, that is, sex before marriage.

“Some students who go against our rules first face a disciplinary committee and if the committee finds them guilty of being of pregnant, are suspended,” he said.

Bishop Barham college principle, Prof. Manuel Muranga, said that they only teach students who are accountable to God. 

“Only six girls were pregnant and the rest had other problems and most of them were forgiven and allowed back to school,” the university’s Public relations officer, Reuben Twinomujuni, said.

Twinomujuni said the university policy provides that unmarried girls who get pregnant automatically suspend themselves.

“Our policy here is that you came to study but not to get pregnant. We look at our students as our daughters and sons, so when someone gets pregnant it is a bad example to the rest especially to an institution that is founded on religion,” he said.

Twinomujuni said that when girls give birth or officially marry, they are allowed to sit for their examinations.  “If the man who impregnated the girl weds her, we allow her back but she cannot stay in the halls of residence because she is a married woman,” he added.

Read details of this story in Saturday Vision. HERE