No ragging, freshers enjoy first day in Delhi colleges

new delhi • Walking past the anti-ragging rally in Delhi University’s north campus, Archita Kumar, a first year student, felt relieved that she didn’t have to face any humiliation while interacting with her seniors in college.
“I was a little nervous about my first day in college since I had heard horror stories about the kind of things that seniors make the freshers do. Thank God, my seniors were not like that. It was actually quite a fun filled interactive session that we, the first year students, had with them,” Kumar, who has taken admission in Hansraj college, said.
“We were asked to come to the Lovers Point, the famous hub of Hansraj and made to sing and dance in front of all the students. Initially we hesitated but then the ball got rolling and it was great fun. “I wouldn’t call it ragging, it was more like an ice breaking session. We can now just walk up to our seniors and ask their help on anything,” she added.
Kirori Mal College campus was also alive and kicking with the students’ happy chatter. Anubhav Goel, a first year student of Kirori Mal, said although he enjoyed the harmless interactive session with his seniors on the first day of college, he was actually looking forward to some twisted ragging! “Our seniors asked us to introduce ourselves before going on to some requests like singing and jiving to some Hindi songs. It was fun, but I was actually looking forward to getting ragged!” he laughed. For those like Tushar Bedi of Keshav Maha Vidyalaya college, the interactive session was not confined to simple things like singing and dancing. But he found it good fun nonetheless. “Doing provocative dance moves, getting married to trees and running around the college screaming ‘Inquilaab Zindabaad’ — we were made to do crazy things by our seniors but we took everything in the right sprit and enjoyed it all,” Bedi said.
Care was taken that nothing turned into an ugly ragging session. Amrita Bahari, president of the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU), led a rally through the campus, reinforcing the message that ragging is banned on the campus. “We don’t discourage healthy interaction between seniors and juniors in the colleges but ragging is strictly prohibited. College principals, wardens of the college hostels and one student representative of each college who is a part of the anti-ragging squad will ensure that ragging doesn’t take place in their respective colleges,” Bahari said