A MISSIVE TO THE V.C. OF ANNA UNIVERSITY FROM A STUDENT SEVERELY CRITICAL OF HIS VIEWS

Your decisions of late reflect very little understanding of the student community and seem to have ulterior motives. You have not come out with a logical explanation of your decisions. We all believe that our tolerance so far has encouraged you to come out with such autocratic measures to control us.

The previous decision to bar vehicles was taken even without knowing whether the two gates had enough capacity to accommodate all the student vehicles. Still it did not receive much flak. May be because it seems to have a shred of sanity. It controlled pollution and also made students to take a compulsory walk which gave them some physical exercise. I am even thankful to you for that. However all the staff being allowed to drive around not only deprives them of the physical exercise (much required) but also gives us a sense of being discriminated.

The ban on camera phones in the campus prior to the total ban due to some isolated incident in Delhi public school is also laughable considering the fact that even that school did not take this drastic step. Also they are all school children and we all are grown ups barely teenagers anymore. Instead of banning the camera phones for unstated reasons pretty obvious, you could have introduced sex education which would have been a revolutionary change and would have shown you in good light.

Your comments on dress sense and the decision to introduce dress code has disgraced us. In what way can a dress one is wearing influence one’s studies unless the dress covers their eyes. Do you want everyone to wear misfit safaris like you resembling a scare crow?

If the current ban on cell phones is implemented, then how the hell are hostellers supposed to communicate with their parents? Through the only telephone booth at the canteen! Can anyone imagine the length of the serpentine queues then? Or are you going to shut it down too so as to separate us from all external influences in this pursuit of a B.E. degree? Isn’t it a little too soon for us to renounce worldly pleasures?

The staff members still are enjoying the luxury of using mobiles legally within the campus. But when a staff member receives a phone call during the lecture and drones away on his phone, the time wasted is equivalent to that of the class strength. Can’t you do the arithmetic here? Which is more destructive? Students with mobiles or teachers with them?

Also if cell phones are banned, it is going to get difficult and expensive to tell one another about the test schedules, time table changes, often being cancelled classes due to irregular staff etc.

Instead of banning phones, being a technical university, you can encourage students to research cheaper methods of signal jamming within the campus. Students can also design a few bio fuel or electric vehicles that can be used within the campus. Also you can do hell of a lot to improve faculty standards. I am not trying to pinpoint one or two failures among the faculty but the whole lot for being so uncompetitive and dispirited.

Quit being such a taskmaster and look at the status-quo from our shoes. Surrounded by servile bootlickers, it is difficult to get new innovative ideas, but please avoid rash decisions like these. Instead of appearing on all T.V. channels suggesting stupid rules making a fool out of yourself, why not take part in a debate with your students, hearing their ideas and give your reasons.

I have written all this not to humiliate or demean you but to drive this into your thick head that you can’t force your opinions on others.