ABOUT 800 students of the University of the West Indies, Mona, yesterday marched around the campus, as they stepped up demands for the UWI administration to extend the October 15 deadline for students to pay their fees for the 2004/2005 academic year.

However, vice-principal Joseph Periera insisted yesterday that the deadline will not be changed.

“The year is half way through and the fees were due on September 3, so those persons would be deregistered now and we have given them two weeks in which to pay and be reinstated. After that the term will be too far gone for them to be reinstated so they will be on a leave of absence for this semester,” Periera told the Observer.

A total of 3,200 students, including undergraduates and post graduates as well as part and full time students have been deregistered. This means the students have been dropped from the university’s current semester records and are considered to be on a leave of absence. However, if they pay the fees by October 15 they would be reinstated.

The UWI vice-principal said that 2,800 students have not paid fees while the other 400 were in varying stages of making arrangements to pay.

“Deregistration is computerised whereby the computer would simply drop anyone who is down as owing. So we will now restore persons who are owing small sums of money,” he said.

Meanwhile, Damion Crawford, president of the Guild of Students of the UWI told the Observer that not extending the deregistration deadline for the students to be reinstated would mean their expulsion.

“It’s semantics, they are expelling us because many of the students can’t afford it and that will never be tolerated. They are saying deregistering when they are being asked forceably to leave. How many of us are going to be able to find the fees by October 15. What is the reality that we will get $120,000 by October 15. How many people can raise $10,000 in two weeks?” Crawford asked.