02/08/2016
Recent Issue.
Christ College campus on Bannerghatta road became a protest zone after a faculty member — who raised his voice against the administration's authoritarian methods of functioning — was fired from his job.
Almost 250 students gathered in the quadrangle of this interdisciplinary campus of Social Sciences and Management for a protest on Friday. Wearing black, the students silently expressed their dissent. Two faculty members who sympathised with their cause also joined the protest.
Unlike the main campus, this new campus — inaugurated earlier this year — has a stricter set of rules. Here humanities students are expected to adhere to the rules usually imposed on students of management studies: Full-sleeved shirts, clean-shaven face, 85 per cent attendance, five internal exams a semester, etc.
The assistant professor in economics who lost his job for speaking up against the "impossible" rules told BM, "This is supreme injustice. If they did not want to give me the space to voice the concerns of my students, then why did they even make me the class teacher."
If the students have a free hour, they are not supposed to leave their classrooms, but any faculty member who is free at the time is expected to engage them. This professor earlier expressed his displeasure against the same and had written a letter to the registrar of the institute, saying this was overworking teachers. However he was asked to abide by the rules.
In a staff meeting held last Monday, a new dress code rule was announced and teachers were requested to inform students of the same. It was then that the professor expressed his disagreement. "What I said was I cannot waste time making such announcements and requested the concerned authorities to take up the responsibility themselves," he says, adding that the associate dean had not attended the meeting.
"However, the same day I received a call from her. She said she thought it's time for me to leave. I was asked to meet the Father at the main campus," he says, adding that his official e-mail was blocked the very day he got the call. The day he visited the main campus, he was asked to leave. He was later denied permission even to meet his students.
"I always ensured that I left my class with a satisfaction of doing my job well," he says, stating how upset he was at having lost his prized job in this manner. "I expressed my opinion because I thought it was a democratic setup.
They fire me for this silly reason," he exclaims in disbelief.
The professor was also earlier reprimanded for sharing the link of a student blog — critical of Christ College — on a WhatsApp group of faculty members.
Students have taken to venting their frustration online under the cover of anonymity. "As this campus contains a majority of business studies students and staff, and is headed by a professor who used to belong to the business studies department on the main campus, we social sciences students are being subjected to their norms and regulations, which we didn't sign up for. We were told there would only be a shift in campuses. We weren't informed that humanities students would be treated like business studies students," thus goes a quote from one student in a blog called the Anonymous Reporter.
The blog claims: "This is an anonymous report of the events that have taken place at Christ University Bannerghatta Road Campus", and talks about student frustrations and the recent series of events.
"As students of humanities we are fine with the dress code, attendance structure, and many other disciplinary measures of the main campus. We also understand the reason behind it, but the modified dress code and micromanagement we go through here is unacceptable. In fact, the UGC and AICTE have banned discriminatory dress codes as of earlier this month and colleges violating may face the risk of derecognition from UGC and AICTE. Moreover, the Student Council is not elected by the students but appointed, so we have nowhere to express our problems," says another student.
Former students of the university are also expressing their concern with the way the university functions. "When we heard the students were not allowed to roll up their sleeves, it sounded so ridiculous. As an ex-Christine, I feel ashamed by this. It's becoming a corporate branch rather than a university," an alumnus of Christ University said.
Dr Jyothi Kumar, the associate dean of the Christ University Bannerghatta Road Campus, who is in the eye of the storm, was not reachable for a comment.
