‘JNU has not witnessed ragging in its 40-year history’
All 19 students were served show-cause notices on Tuesday
NEW DELHI: Acting tough, Jawaharlal Nehru University here has rusticated nine students for two years and declared the campus out of bounds for them. All nine had been caught ragging their juniors.
Another batch of ten students, including three girls, who were witness to the incidents but did not stop or report them, have been expelled from the campus hostel for a year with immediate effect.
All are students of Master of Computer Applications at the JNU School of Computer and Systems Sciences.
The decision was taken after the report of a proctorial inquiry was presented before Vice-Chancellor B. B. Bhattacharya on Wednesday.
“JNU has not witnessed ragging in its 40-year history. We want to keep our anti-ragging tradition alive. It is important to send out a strong message to students who indulge in ragging,” Prof. Bhattacharya told The Hindu.
“As per the regulations of the University Grants Commission, at the time of the admission this year we asked the students to sign an affidavit that they would not get involved in ragging. It is unfortunate that in spite of this, they took part in such activities,” he lamented.
All the 19 students were served show-cause notices on Tuesday evening after the inquiry found them guilty.
The inquiry committee was formed after a first year MCA student complained to the authorities last week that freshers were being “tortured”.
Thereafter the JNU anti-ragging squad also allegedly caught some MCA students ragging freshers and consequently the administration withdrew the hostel facilities of four senior students last Thursday.
“The students’ responses to the show-cause notices were not satisfactory and convincing, after which we decided to award them final punishment. Nine students have been rusticated for four semesters, while ten others who were present as silent spectators, have been expelled from the hostel for two semesters,” said Chief Proctor H. B. Bohidar.
The inquiry established that even though the acts of ragging were “mild”, they were going on unreported since the beginning of this month.
“We also discussed during the investigation why all these ragging activities were concentrated in one particular School (of Computer and Systems Sciences). It appears that most students from this School have done their under-graduate studies from a technical institution. Most of these professional colleges have some tradition of ragging,” observed Prof. Bohidar.
“They tend to carry that baggage of ragging here to JNU and ruin the ethos of our campus,” he rued.
It is for the first time that a case of ragging was reported by a student. JNU had also reported the matter to the police.
No comments:
Post a Comment