JU brand name under threat
By Sukanta Chaudhuri
Campus violence is something that Jadavpur University has learnt to live with now. In fact, we have earned enough acclaim for this in all our years of student unrest, something that has become a brand of its own and comparable with what happens in institutions like Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University.
This institution has still managed to keep its academic fame intact, but there is a far bigger problem that is not getting highlighted, something that will eventually affect the brand name of the institution, to use a corporate jargon.
A number of new rules are being ushered in under the aegis of the vice-chancellor, which will have a long term negative impact on the research activities of the university. It was after years of painstaking effort by the teaching community here that 21 interdisciplinary schools were formed but the VC has formulated a system whereby these schools are functioning without directors and are gradually getting into the doldrums.
The faculty dean is supposed to oversee everything. This is humanly impossible. I fear that this is a calculated move to destroy the institution.
It is the violence on campus that easily attracts the attention of the media but such non-violent long term damage will ultimately affect the very basis on which the university has made its name.
As for the violence on Tuesday night I must say that the campus has become divided into two enemy camps, one led by the VC and the other, by the students. How can the VC decide to call the police as the go-between instead of communicating with the students himself? Why did he not rely on the registrar or the teachers? The students had been holding a demonstration for some days and did not gherao the VC. How could he say that there was a threat to his life?
I accept that the atmosphere at JU has always been very volatile where dialogues between students and the management have mostly turned disruptive but for the VC to say that students were planning to eliminate him, is rather far-fetched. For a VC to bring charges of murder conspiracy and rioting with weapons against his students can land them in serious trouble. A VC filing an FIR against his students is a matter of grave significance. I have seen TV footage of what happened on campus and I am sure that students were definitely not trying to murder their VC.
During the Left regime, I worked on this campus and worked quite freely, I must say this despite the fact that I was not a Left supporter. But today there is a shift. Academics is being remote controlled now.
(As told to Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey)
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