It’s meant to insulate freshers at IIT-Madras from the scourge of ragging. No wonder seniors aren’t liking it one bit.
In fact a bunch of seniors on Saturday staged a protest against the new regulations for hostel accommodation for first-year students.
Starting this academic year, first-year undergraduate students will be accommodated in hostels along with their post-graduate seniors. The space vacated by UG freshers in the UG hostel will be utilised to accommodate PG freshers. This mix would hopefully kill the ragging instinct among UG seniors, authorities feel.
But for UG seniors, they are killjoys. Around 60 of them on Saturday staged a demonstration and a protest march on the campus. Student representatives told Express that security personnel tried to obstruct their march to the residence of the director of the institute.
The director and a few officials later agreed to meet a few students. At the meeting, the students argued that insulating freshers would affect senior-junior relations.
“We reasoned that it would curb their freedom. Decreased interactions with seniors would affect grooming of freshers,” the representatives said.
But the arguments failed to cut much ice, a student representative felt. “Even if the insulation is aimed at curbing ragging, it won’t work. If we really want to rag a fresher, we can anyway call him aside somewhere else on the campus and do so at will,” said a senior.
However, the institute director has reportedly promised to meet first-year students and discuss the matter. Despite repeated attempts, IIT-M officials were unavailable for comment.