The UGC apparently is much concerned about the safety of students on campuses across the country. So they have come up with a guideline to ensure just that as they believe "a safe, secure and cohesive learning climate is an ineluctable precondition to quality education and research." Therefore, they have asked
1. Physical infrastructure housing students should be secured by a boundary wall so high that it cannot be scaled and fortified further by barbed wires.
2. Setting up police station within the premises of the higher education institutes.
3.The institutes should organize quarterly parent-teacher meeting.
4. A student counselling system has to be put in place with teacher counsellers who will periodically communicate to the parents the intellectual and emotive needs of their wards. Teacher counselors can coordinate with the hostel warden and exchange personal details of the students.
There is many more but these points are the most problematic. First, the good point is of course they have not said that only the girls hostels should be secured by a boundary wall. It is both- men and women- who have to be secured. The problem is that this gives an impression of a prison which an educational institute is definitely not. Most campuses have a boundary wall and most of them have rules and regulations as to who is allowed into the campus. The campus security to a large extent takes care of it. In a campus like JNU where students are allowed to move freely it is largely because it is safe. Even in M.S. University, where there were strict timings as to when we should return to the hostel (we girls hardly ever did that), the campus was safe enough for us to go from the department to the hostel at 9 in the night. Having a boundary wall does not solve security issues neither does having a police station.
Parent-Teacher meetings? For heaven's sake, the students in Universities and colleges are adults! They are not children where the teacher has to meet and appraise them of their activities.
As for the section on counseling, has the UGC heard of confidentiality?
I do not what UGC is thinking but these guidelines are ridiculous. They have to understand that the students are attending colleges and Universities are adults. You can provide counseling services, grievance redress mechanisms, campus security (for example, the UGC has asked for night drop service which is a very nice idea) but beyond it there is not much that a University/college can do without seeming to be a prison.
1. Physical infrastructure housing students should be secured by a boundary wall so high that it cannot be scaled and fortified further by barbed wires.
2. Setting up police station within the premises of the higher education institutes.
3.The institutes should organize quarterly parent-teacher meeting.
4. A student counselling system has to be put in place with teacher counsellers who will periodically communicate to the parents the intellectual and emotive needs of their wards. Teacher counselors can coordinate with the hostel warden and exchange personal details of the students.
There is many more but these points are the most problematic. First, the good point is of course they have not said that only the girls hostels should be secured by a boundary wall. It is both- men and women- who have to be secured. The problem is that this gives an impression of a prison which an educational institute is definitely not. Most campuses have a boundary wall and most of them have rules and regulations as to who is allowed into the campus. The campus security to a large extent takes care of it. In a campus like JNU where students are allowed to move freely it is largely because it is safe. Even in M.S. University, where there were strict timings as to when we should return to the hostel (we girls hardly ever did that), the campus was safe enough for us to go from the department to the hostel at 9 in the night. Having a boundary wall does not solve security issues neither does having a police station.
Parent-Teacher meetings? For heaven's sake, the students in Universities and colleges are adults! They are not children where the teacher has to meet and appraise them of their activities.
As for the section on counseling, has the UGC heard of confidentiality?
I do not what UGC is thinking but these guidelines are ridiculous. They have to understand that the students are attending colleges and Universities are adults. You can provide counseling services, grievance redress mechanisms, campus security (for example, the UGC has asked for night drop service which is a very nice idea) but beyond it there is not much that a University/college can do without seeming to be a prison.
No comments:
Post a Comment