Students of Jadavpur University have been organising a sit-in outside the office of Vice Chancellor Suranjan Das and other executive committee members to protest the institute’s decision to scrap admission tests for six humanities departments.
The University has announced the decision to scrap admission tests – and said that merit lists based on marks in different board examinations will be out on July 19. An admissions committee meeting is scheduled on July 18. Admission based on the merit lists will be held on July 27, 28, 30 and 31.
Even as the university had earlier announced that 50:50 weightage would be given to board marks and admission tests, the decision was changed yesterday when the authorities said that no admission tests will be held for English, Comparative Literature, Bengali, History, Philosophy and International Relations departments.
Meanwhile, a number of teachers from the English department have informed the university authorities that they wouldn’t want to be part of the admission process. Head of the Department, English, Abhijit Gupta, said that in any case the university authorities did not want them to be part of it.
“We find it hard to accept the decision to do away with admission tests,” Gupta said.
A number of teachers of the English department said that they felt the authorities did not want them to be part of the admission process, so the fact that they were “boycotting” it wasn’t even relevant perhaps.
While VC Suranjan Das said that he had been confined to his office for the past 20 hours, students said that this was not the case. Das said that staying in the office for so long had taken a toll on his health. “I am not well,” he said.
But the students said they had not gheraoed the VC and other university officials. “The VC is free to leave. We have not gheraoed him,” said Ushashi Pal, who is part of the sit-in. Also present was Arko Roy, who said that the sit-in was being misconstrued as a gherao. “We have not forced him to sit in his office. It is up to him whether he wants to leave his office. We are organising a peaceful sit-in,” he said.
