The Cape Coast Polytechnic has held its 19th matriculation with a call on the new students to be modest about their dressing both within and outside the Polytechnic in order to uphold the good name of the institution.

Dr Lawrence Atepor, Rector of the Polytechnic, who addressed the students, told them not to only dress decently for church services, but also when attending lecturers, in their hostels and anywhere they found themselves, stressing that the school did want “Apuskele ladies and Otto Fista guys”.

He said this year the Polytechnic admitted a total of 953 students comprising 808 tertiary, including Bachelor of Technology students and those enrolled in the evening school and 147 non-tertiary students to pursue courses in Civil Engineering, Applied Sciences and Arts and Business Management studies.

Dr Atepor urged them to resolve individually and collectively to take their studies seriously in order to achieve the main objectives of taking up the programmes and gave the assurance that the staff would deliver value- for-money services to enable them achieve their goals.

He said the school authorities placed a high premium on the corporate image of the Polytechnic and would ensure that the institution was held in high esteem at all times and would therefore unreservedly condemned the acts of insubordination, examination malpractices, stealing, occultism, bullying and any acts that sought to tarnish the reputation of the school.

Dr Atepor told the matriculants to use the appropriate channels such as the Students’ Representative Council (SRC), Dean of Students’ Affairs to express their grievances and not to resort to intimidation and demonstration, adding “in civilized societies differences are resolved through dialogue not anarchy”.

He said the Polytechnic placed much importance in the quality of graduates and would not compromise on any form of academic dishonesty and that any of the new students found to have gained admission through fraudulent means would be dismissed in due course.

The Rector announced that in the pursuance of the vision to develop C-Poly into a centre of academic excellence in Technology and Liberal Studies, the Bachelor of Technology degree programme in Building, has since 2008 been introduced and that the second batch of students into Bachelor of Technology Degree programmes in Mechanical Engineering, had been admitted this year.

He commended the government of Ghana, which through the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFUND) continued to provide massive infrastructure, which include lecture halls and residential accommodation for staff and asked the student to reciprocate the gesture by taking their studies seriously to become worthy citizens in the country.

On the December polls, Dr Atepor cautioned the students not to allow themselves to be manipulated by any person to engage in acts that would disturb the peace of the nation, “remember without peace there can be no development” he added.