Reject UGS'c Plans to curtail Student Mobility and Restrict Student Movement

Reject UGS'c Plans to curtail Student Mobility and Restrict Student Movement Students’ Federation of India Central Executive Committee 15th May, 2015 UGC has recently prepared ‘Guidelines on Safety of Students on and off Campuses of Higher Educational Institutions’ and a letter from the UGC secretary dated 17.4.15 requests all HEIs to implement these guidelines. CEC statement following this out rightly rejected this regressive guidelines. In the last few days, fresh news reports have come in some newspapers which hint at UGC again pushing for these guidelines. Some reports are talking about UGC’s plans of introducing biometric attendance for students in colleges/universities and also in hostels. Some of the points in the guidelines include manual frisking/ frisking through metal detectors of the belongings of students/ visitors, biometric attendance in institute and hostels, fortification of the institution through, ‘a fence of spiralling barbed wires can be surmounted on the wall so that unauthorized access to the infrastructure is prevented effectively.’ Further, guidelines talks about setting up of police outposts in the campuses. These guidelines clearly smack of motive to curtail student mobility, foster moral policing in campuses and attack democratic student movement. We would like to state that all HEIs in the Country have well established internal mechanism to deal with ‘safety’ of the students and others sections. The only way by which ‘safety’ can be ensured in our campuses is by strengthening the democratic processes within the campus. On the contrary the guidelines prepared by the UGC will act to further erode the campus democracy. We also understand that at a time when fresh round of academic reforms in the name of CBCS/RUSA are all set to destroy our Public Education, ruling class wants to curtail the students’ protests through such designs. Central Executive Committee of Students’ Federation of India calls upon all its units to organize programmes in the campuses against these guidelines and build effective resistance by building unity among the students and other sections. Released by Dr. V Sivadasan (President) Ritabrata Banerjee ( General Secretary)