As a 1969 graduate of UWI, I and many of my peers are the same age as the university and so I welcome this opportunity to reflect. The young adults that we were in 1969 are now turning 75!! That can’t be. The decade of the sixties was a very special time in Jamaica’s history. We were a very lucky group. Many of the students at that time had their education paid for. Cost did not weigh heavily on our minds. It seems worlds apart from the experience of many of the students that I read about now.

The Trinidad style carnival and the early morning J’ouvert were certainly new to many Jamaicans. I remember us wearing our red gowns to formal dinners. I remember the fêtes at the Student Union with the sound of ska and rock steady blaring. I remember walking back to Seacole with my friends at 3 a.m. and no sense of fear. So many things have changed.

The development of a strong feeling of pride in our Black and Caribbean cultural identity is what I appreciate most about my time at Mona. It has helped me to navigate other more alien environments in predominantly white cultural communities. I have the UWI to thank for that sense of self.

Many of the outstanding academics of the sixties and seventies were doing their seminal work at UWI at the time. We were surrounded by a sense of Black and Caribbean achievement. Lucille Mathurin Mair was the Warden of Mary Seacole Hall while I was a student. She presided nightly over our formal dinners. We knew at the time that she was working on her doctorate. What I realized only recently is that her thesis, “A Historical Study of Women in Jamaica: 1655-1844”, became a foundational work for Women’s Studies. I also remember Professor Coulthard in the Spanish Department and Professor Sylvia Wynter, among others. We were exposed to the Caribbean focus in the writing of the academics and researchers with which many of us had not been familiar in high school. Lady Phillips in the administrative building, in her support role for students, was always empathetic as she directed students to opportunities for summer jobs.

In 1968, we demonstrated in support of Walter Rodney and against the Jamaican government’s decision to declare him persona non grata. I can still picture the wave of students in their red gowns coming out in groups along the Ring Road from the various halls and meeting in a large group at the main gates to the campus on Hermitage Road. Without social media, the news quickly spread just as effectively by word of mouth that there was a demonstration taking place and we needed to be there. There were soldiers on the other side of the gate and there was quite a lot of verbal to and fro. The gate was definitely symbolic of the social divide.

I would not have missed the Mona experience for the world. UWI in the sixties was like a cocoon, somewhat isolated from the real world. Reality intruded in our lives soon enough. I feel blessed to have been at UWI at that particular moment in our history.

Rose Spencer Gibbs. Author. Island of Plantations: A Jamaican Reflection.