Jadavpur University’s tradition of missing out on deadlines to segregate accommodation for first-year students because of opposition from senior students continues.
The students who were, on one pretext or the other, refusing to vacate a hostel that had been earmarked for freshers told the university authorities on Wednesday that they were opposed to the idea of any senior student having to relocate. The university, they said, should build a new hostel for first-year students.
They held an agitation till late on Wednesday evening in front of the university’s committee room No. 2, where a meeting of JU’s executive council was being held. The council is JU’s highest decision-making body.
The university authorities, having missed out on the September 30 deadline to segregate accommodation for freshers, had set October 10 as the revised deadline for the task.
Officials said the task has now become even more difficult.
Somnath Saha, who was among the protesting students, said the authorities should build a hostel solely for first-year students on the National Instrument Ltd (NIL) campus of the university, which is across the road from the main campus.
“The university is free to create a separate hostel for first-year students by constructing a hostel on the university’s NIL campus. No one can be shifted from any of the existing hostels,” said Saha.
“If we keep moving from one hostel to another, it affects our studies,” said another protesting student.
JU had proposed relocating those now housed in a staff quarters block and the New Block hostel to create a separate facility for freshers, as mandated by the UGC.
The National Instruments Ltd, a sick public sector unit, was handed over to the JU by the Union government in
2009.
The demand for a separate hostel for freshers became stronger after a first-year student was allegedly killed in the university’s main hostel in August. The 17-year-old was allegedly thrown off a balcony by senior students.
The Telegraph reported on August 20 that a decision by JU to earmark a hostel (New Boys’ Hostel) for first-year students, in compliance with the UGC directive issued in 2009, had triggered protests. Postgraduate students at the hostel refused to move out.
Over 30 first-year students who stayed in the A-1 and A-2 blocks of JU Main Hostel were temporarily shifted to the New Boys’ Hostel on August 10, hours after the first-year student died.
“The 15-odd senior students in the New Block Hostel said they were opposed to shifting to a PG hostel as they were scared of their seniors,” said a members of the executive council of JU.
