JOHANNESBURG - The urgent application by students from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) to interdict their end-of-year examinations was dismissed by the South Gauteng High Court on Thursday.

Judge Willem Van der Linde said that there were “many unclear issues” in the students’interdict application, which led to his decision to dismiss it.

They wanted Wits to postpone the exams because students were still “stressed and traumatised”.

For the past six weeks student protests for free education have often resulted in violent clashes with the police and private security stationed at the university.

As a result, some students feel the atmosphere at the institution is not conducive for writing exams.

Initially there were only 25 students that were party to the application to interdict the exams.

But in a short space of time, the aggrieved students managed to persuade 3,000 others to sign a petition in support of the interdict application.

However, Van der Linde said Wits had already allowed students to write deferred examinations. He said such flexibility was sufficient and rational.

He added that the students’ case should have been that the university had acted irrationally and didn’t consider their circumstances.

The judge also said there wasn’t an exact number of how many residences and students were affected.

Final-year LLB student Seadimo Tlale said she was disappointed the application to interdict the exams was dismissed even though students were having to deal trauma every day.

“They are only giving us two weeks to do work that lectures would’ve done in four weeks.

"Every night we are dreaming about stun grenades and choking on teargas and Wits is telling us that we are delusional and it’s just in our heads,” complained Tlale.

Wits spokesman Shirona Patel said another issue was whether students could stay in residence until deferred exams were written in December and who would pay for the extra costs.

“Deferred exams are scheduled for December for some faculties and January for others,” Patel said.