BENGALURU: With the onset of the examination season, students believe that college authorities are suppressing data on Covid cases.
A survey by Manipal Institute of Technology students on offline examinations, scheduled to be held from December 17 onwards, suggests that 80 per cent of the 1,443 respondents believe that Covid-19 cases are being suppressed.
A majority of the students believe they should be marked based on their past achievements, while another large section of students said examinations should be held online, and 84.6 per cent said they feared the Omicron variant. A majority of the respondents were second-year students.
More than half the students said they know of someone, family or friends, who are infected with Covid.
A student from the college said that after much persuasion, the administration agreed to conduct mass testing to identify Covid cases. However, instead of enforcing testing and sharing results, MIT has been suppressing data and projecting normalcy.
“Several students are taken away in ambulances on a daily basis and Covid has begun affecting students and faculty at MIT,” the student added, saying it is irresponsible to hold offline exams and impractical to offer re-exam opportunity in the last week of January as an alternative to students who are supposed to start internships in the first week of January.
Terming the Covid cases as rumours, MIT Director Anil Rana said the ambulances are for other health cases. Almost 2,000 students have been tested so far and there are zero cases, he said.
Meanwhile, a student, purportedly from Mount Carmel College in Bengaluru, confessed in an audio clip about testing positive in the last week of November. Students claimed there were positive cases while college authorities said there were none.
The principal had told The New Indian Express on December 4 that there was no positive cases. and that a BBMP team was on campus on December 3 to test students, and the results had come in. However, she did not respond on Tuesday.
MIT to hold online exams
Late Tuesday evening, Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) announced that it had shifted its semester 5 and 7 examinations for undergraduate students, and third-year MCA exams online.
This comes in the wake of protests by students against offline examinations, suspecting a number of cases on campus.
MIT Director Anil Rana, however, stated that there are no Covid-19 cases on campus, and mass testing is going on. The Covid-19 monitoring committee of Manipal Academy of Higher Education has reassessed the prevailing Covid situation in the state.
Having analysed all pros and cons in depth, the committee has reached a unanimous decision that the Covid-19 scenario, especially with the threat of the Omicron variant spread, is worrisome.
Students, however, were apprehensive about the online proctored examination as electricity and internet issues remain a concern when taking the examination.