Integrity, objectivity and fairness. These are the top principles of the newly appointed ombud of Stellenbosch University (SU), whose official commencement of duties is from 1 November.<\/p>\n
Advocate Rina Meyer’s<\/strong> role as ombud will be to attend to problems and complaints of students, parents or staff in cases where the University structures are inadequate or unable to provide satisfactory solutions.<\/p>\n “I think my first and most important responsibility in handling concerns will be to listen. You can’t reach a just decision in a dispute unless you listen to both sides of the story.”<\/p>\n Meyer says that people in conflict situations often don’t listen to each other. This is the true reason why matters cannot be resolved peacefully and litigation is used as a last resort.<\/p>\n People are scared of conflict. When a party’s personal emotions are involved, it becomes challenging for that person to listen rationally. Peaceful solutions are jeopardised if not all parties are heard properly. You have to give people a voice. This in itself takes them far towards working out their problems.”<\/p>\n Meyer is looking forward to her term as ombud and is ready to tackle this new challenge.<\/p>\n “SU has bestowed an honour and a huge responsibility on me.”<\/p>\n Meyer holds various degrees from North-West University, the University of Pretoria, the former Randse Afrikaanse Universiteit (now the University of Johannesburg) and the University of South Africa. She obtained her LLB degree at SU<\/strong>.<\/p>\n She started out as a teacher (at high schools in Somerset-West and Randburg) and went on to become state prosecutor, advocate in the High Court, part-time law lecturer at the University of the Western Cape and\u00a0assessor of the High Court. She has been a member of the Cape Bar since 1994 and specializes in mediation, facilitation and family law.<\/p>\n She takes over from Prof Julian Sonn as SU ombud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Integrity, objectivity and fairness. These are the top principles of the newly appointed ombud of Stellenbosch University (SU), whose official commencement of duties is from 1 November. Advocate Rina Meyer’s role as ombud will be to attend to problems and complaints of students, parents or staff in cases where the University structures are inadequate or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21296],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuus-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3263,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262\/revisions\/3263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/law\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}