Ngor Sheikh:

The exclusionary politics of denying a group of people from serving a particular constituency (FBC) is clearly one of the ugly stains on the Mount of Enlightenment (Aureol) that we should honestly discusss. Let us also go further and note that the days before the provincial hegemony of student affairs were characterized by the same exlusionary tendency. Autrement dire, the problem of a weakened civil society down Mount Aureol was excerbated by the contamination of an intelligentsia that mirrored the dominant unequal distribution of socio-political capital in a neo-colony....

The price we pay for keeping the terrain safe for only a chosen few can be seen in the wasteland we call independence. How many better qualified students were denied the right or scared into the solitude of the library even when they wanted to serve the collective interest of the students? Without getting into what social scientists call counter-factuals, FBC would have produced the kind of leaders that would have checked the tide of authori- tarian rule. Your example of Jimmy is simply the most startling case; many others who were geographically or ethnically "cursed" never showed the inclina- tion to serve. And the beat goes on....

Sanjhan