Contradicting her own party slogan, communications lecturer Louiselle Vassallo let her university students down by never showing up for her own lectures, despite the impending exams in a few days, with the official explanation given by the campus authorities being that not everything is possible.
In the latest edition of The Insiter – the university students’ newspaper – Vassallo is outed as an absentee lecturer who only attended university once this semester for a course on video production; and even then she was 25 minutes late.
The course is intended for third year communications students, and according to the student newspaper, “her excuse to students for missing the lectures during the months of February and March was that she was very busy with the election campaign”.
The newspaper reported how students who turned up for the first lecture were asked by the secretary of the Centre for Communications Technology (CCT) what they were waiting for. Upon telling her they had a lecture with Vassallo, she ended up ridiculing them.
“Do you think she is going to come to class for you? During an election?” the secretary replied.
But even after her leader was elected, Vassallo still carried on skiving her university work, and The Insiter added that CCT “were not even sure if she had agreed to give this course”.
The newspaper goes on to add that among the students there are foreigners “paying good money” who complained to the department head, Saviour Chircop, about Vassallo’s habit of sending them an SMS every morning when she was supposed to be lecturing them, informing them she wasn’t going to turn up.
Prof. Chircop is quoted as saying that it was not always possible to honour commitments, while at the same time admitting Vassallo was missing lectures because of the election. Ironically, the same Prof. Chircop is a stickler for punctuality, to the point that he would refuse to admit students if they were only three minutes late for lectures.
Last year, The Insiter reported about another part-time communications lecturer, AnnaMaria Darmanin, who had also made a name for herself for the number of lectures she had skipped.
Another lecturer notorious for rarely showing up for lectures, this time from the faculty of law, was former President Guido De Marco… although the Nationalist Party back then hardly claimed that “everything was possible.”
Besides De Marco, the law faculty in general is known to be a nest of skiving lecturers.