CHANTING, placard-waving students occupied the Peninsula Technikon’s Student Representative Council offices on Wednesday, demanding the immediate reinstatement of its former president Solly Lamini. Following charges by a female student that she had been lewdly fondled by Lamini last year, a campus disciplinary committee found him guilty of sexual harassment. He was first suspended from the SRC; later expelled. A group calling itself “Concerned Students” is fighting to have him reinstated and about 80 marched on the SRC and occupied its offices briefly on Wednesday.
The disciplinary committee hearing was initiated only months after the student lodged a complaint against Lamini. Traumatised by the incident, she was unable to write her exams at the end of last year.
Female students were furious at what they saw as Pentech’s tardiness in taking action, and voiced suspicions that there was a conspiracy of silence owing to the fact that Lamini’s mother is a senator. The technikon denied this accusation, and eventually instituted the disciplinary committee hearing.