Durban - A University of KwaZulu-Natal medical school hopeful who is fighting to get a place at the institution will have to reconsider her career options.
A Durban High Court judge on Wednesday dismissed – with costs – her urgent application to be considered for selection on her 2014 straight-A matric results, and to ignore her academic record from the University of Cape Town, where she studied for six months last year.
Acting Judge Andrea Gabriel said she would give reasons for her ruling later this week.
Attorney Rajen Naidoo, who acted for Chavara Naidoo and attended court with her parents, said they could only comment after receiving and studying these.
But even if they decided to appeal, it would be too late for admission this year.
Read: Straight-A student takes on UKZN
Naidoo, who matriculated at Crawford College La Lucia in 2014, launched the urgent application earlier this month complaining that UKZN was incorrectly treating her as a mature student – which would disqualify her from being selected because she had not completed at least a year at another university – instead of on her matric marks.
Successfully arguing for an interim order keeping a spot open to her, she said she was deserving of a place on the basis of her matric marks, but the delays in resolving the dispute and the quota system limiting the number of Indian admissions to the school – with only 10 posts left for Indian applications – meant others, less qualified, could get the sought-after places.
She said UKZN had offered her a position for 2015, but she had already accepted a place at UCT.
In her affidavit she said things did not work out there because she was young, living on her own and had became depressed. She deregistered after writing exams mid-year and applied to UKZN.
However, the university insisted she could not be considered on her matric results and intimated that Naidoo had been less than honest, not disclosing her academic past and that she had failed a subject and not done well in the others.
Read: UKZN fights straight-A student’s bid
Officials said the fact that she had studied at another university precluded them from considering her on the basis of her matric results. She was also precluded from being considered a mature student because she had not completed a year at UCT.
In argument on Wednesday, advocate Antonie Troskie, for Naidoo, denied any dishonesty. He said Naidoo had established a “clear right” for her application to be considered. There were only two doors of entry, one as a matriculant and the other as a mature student, for which she did not qualify. The rule that the application had to be made in the matric year was absurd, he said.
“What if an exemplary matriculant has to work for a year or two to raise money to afford fees?”
He also suggested Naidoo’s UCT academic record should be ignored, then backtracked later, saying “it may well be a consideration”.
But advocate Murray Pitman, for the university, said the rules allowed potential students a two-year gap. “They can be considered on their matric marks as long as they have not studied elsewhere in that time. If they have, that academic record also has to be taken into the equation.”
He said Naidoo had “clearly been reticent to divulge the truth” about UCT, not disclosing it in her application, and had only produced her results after launching the court application and UKZN had insisted on it.
He said while she might have a right to be considered for admission, she did not have a right to dictate the terms of that.
Before ruling, Judge Gabriel asked if there was any chance of “the parties talking to each other”.
But Troskie said the university held all the cards and Pitman said: “She wants to be considered in a category she does not qualify for. It is not going to happen.”
The Mercury