JU hostel row leaves freshers in the lurch

The continuing dispute over whether freshers at Jadavpur University should be shielded from ragging by segregating them from senior boarders has forced those who have applied for hostel seats to hunt for temporary accommodation elsewhere.
The new academic session has just begun, but there is no sign yet of the impasse between the university and the student unions ending.
Unions representing engineering, science and arts students say the university’s proposal to allot separate hostels to first-year students will create another problem instead of solving the one that exists. “The proposal to keep first-year students in separate hostels is an absurd one,” said Anujit Chakraborty, the general secretary of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology Students’ Union.
“Can the authorities ensure that ragging will never take place if the first-year students are allotted separate hostels? We believe this will only create a rivalry between junior and senior students.”
The proposal to create freshers-only hostels came from a four-member committee that was asked to suggest measures to stop ragging in the institution.
The committee had been constituted after a probe panel found two students guilty of verbally and physically abusing an engineering student in one of the university hostels last year.
One of the students was temporarily suspended from the university and the other was denied hostel accommodation for a year, sources said.
“We are in a fix. The Supreme Court has made it compulsory for all educational institutions to ensure that ragging does not take place. But our students are strongly opposed to the proposal to isolate the first-year boarders from their seniors,” said a member of the university’s executive council.
Representatives of the student community said during a meeting last week that they would not accept the proposal under any circumstance.
“We had placed our proposal to allot separate hostels to newcomers before the students’ representatives on July 11. Our students are opposed to the idea. We have not totally dropped the proposal. Discussions on the issue are still on and we expect to find a solution very soon,” said registrar Rajat Banerjee.
The Centre and the state government banned ragging after the Supreme Court issued an order based on the recommendations of a committee that examined ways to stop the practice.