There is an important backstory to the present controversy surrounding UWI's use of People's Place that should not be forgotten.
When the decision was first made to convert the purpose-built Five Islands Secondary School into the UWI Five Islands Campus, there was significant opposition — not to having a university in Antigua and Barbuda, but to that particular location and the long-term planning surrounding it.
One of the central concerns raised was simple: Was a facility designed as a secondary school, and the surrounding Five Islands location, adequate for the development and future expansion of a landed university campus?
The UPP's position at the time was that Antigua and Barbuda should have a university, but that the former US Air Force Base area at Coolidge offered a better opportunity to develop a proper university/education hub alongside other tertiary institutions already located in that area.
The alternative advocated was the former US Air Force Base area at Coolidge, alongside AUA, ABHTI and ABIIT, creating what was described as a “University Village.”
Most strikingly, the government itself subsequently acknowledged that expansion was necessary.
Others outside of the political Opposition raised similar concerns about Five Islands and its capacity for future expansion.
Those concerns were dismissed at the time as political opposition.
Yet here we are.
UWI is growing — which is something we welcome — and the introduction of the Law programme is another important step in that growth. But the existing campus reportedly cannot presently accommodate that expansion, and we are now looking outside of the campus for additional classroom space.
That brings us to People's Place, a property owned by the governing Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party.
So perhaps it is time to revisit the original question:
Was sufficient long-term planning done when Five Islands was selected as the site of a landed university campus?
Universities grow. They add faculties, programmes, research facilities, libraries, laboratories, etc. Expansion should therefore never have been an unexpected development.
In fact, in 2017, Prime Minister Gaston Browne announced approximately EC$27 million from a Chinese grant for additional classrooms, a lecture theatre and dormitories, saying it was evident the facility needed expansion to accommodate anticipated local and overseas students.
This is why planning matters.
Had Antigua and Barbuda developed a long-term tertiary education hub with adequate land and infrastructure for future expansion, would we now be searching for off-campus facilities to accommodate a new Law programme?
And unfortunately, the solution now creates another legitimate concern: a publicly supported regional university conducting classes from premises owned by the political party currently forming the Government.
Regardless of which political party is involved, that arrangement should make us uncomfortable.
It raises questions about institutional independence, political neutrality, transparency, the selection of the facility, the rental arrangement and the flow of funds from a publicly supported institution to a governing political organisation.
This is why everything cannot be reduced to party politics. Sometimes an opposing view is simply highlighting a foreseeable problem.
Good governance requires us to evaluate ideas on their merit, even when they come from the other side. Had some of the concerns raised about location, capacity and future expansion years ago been treated as planning considerations rather than political attacks, perhaps we would not be having this discussion today.
The irony is that the very issue raised then — the suitability of Five Islands for the long-term expansion of a university — has returned to the national conversation through the need to find additional space now.
The question therefore isn't whether we support UWI. We absolutely should. The question is whether Antigua and Barbuda planned adequately for the UWI we hoped it would become.
And going forward, are we prepared to correct that planning deficiency properly, or will we continue finding temporary solutions that create additional governance and transparency concerns?
This is bigger than UPP and ABLP.
It is about planning, good governance, stewardship of taxpayers' resources and making decisions today that will still make sense ten and twenty years from now.
