The Linguist

According to Mr. Manasseh Azure, Investigative journalism is like academic research. If you have randomly or purposively (as in Prof. Gyampo’s case) sampled a university lecturer who allegedly offers undeserved grades to his sexually harassed students, then you can only use one approach to test your hypothesis: let your engagement focus on the subject of the investigation. Go to the lecturer and tell him you are one of his over one thousand students and you have failed his subject or you are not sure of passing his subject. If he asks for sex in order to give you the grade, you have your story,” he explained.

Mr Azure, therefore, criticized the approach adopted by the investigative team by saying:

“You can easily get a fake student ID card and index number that show you a student taking his course. When you are going to bust a lecturer offering grades in return for sex, you don’t go to him or her as someone seeking mentorship or to seek national service placement without mentioning the subject of grades,”

The problem here is that this is just one of the many methods that could have been adopted as a research strategy.

Also, Mr. Azure is overlooking the fact that in Academic Research, there is the General Objective and two or more Specific Objectives that are set for a particular research. To put it simply, academic research will always have a General Objective and Specific Objectives. In this case, the general objective as seen in the second sentence of the letter (https://linguistnews.com/2019/10/09/bbcs-letter-to-prof-gyampo/) sent to Prof Gyampo, was to:

‘To investigate the existence of Sex for grades in West African Universities using UG and UNILAG as case studies‘

and the specific objectives were:

• to investigate the issue of sexual harassment among Lecturers
• to investigate the issues of sexual abuse by University Lecturers

Now to achieve this objective, the BBC first used a convenience sampling method to make enquiries from students to know the lecturers who constantly harass students and some names constantly kept coming up. In view of this, they narrowed their research to the names that came up constantly.

In the case of Professor Gyampo, they purposely went in to investigate the case of Sexual harassment and this can be seen in the letter written to Prof Gyampo https://linguistnews.com/2019/10/09/bbcs-letter-to-prof-gyampo/. In the letter, the Professor is not being accused of ‘sex for grades’ but rather, he is being accused of “exploiting an academic relationship with a student”. Now the question is:

Is it true or false?

Let us, as well-meaning and concerned Ghanaians, rather extend this investigation to other sectors of the economy and see the extent to which sexual harassment is going on and put policies in place to mitigate its occurrence, rather than attacking the methods adopted to root out this canker.

By: K. S. Kuffour (Research and Business Developer)

email: thetutor.gh@gmail.com