After a lull, ragging has been raising its ugly head in colleges, albeit in different forms. Juniors are now threatened outside the college premises and attacked as any such incident on the campus can attract severe punishment, including rustication and a jail term.
Two students were beaten up recently by a senior and his friends, in an engineering college on the city outskirts. The root cause is believed to be the ‘junior-senior issue’ though an altercation at the students’ technical festival led to the attack.
Unsafe campuses
The accused, meanwhile, is not even an eligible student as he was detained in his second year for lack of attendance. While it remains a mystery how such students still enter the campus and create nuisance, the college management is yet to provide an answer on the matter.
“Bloated egos are the cause for such physical attacks. While such attacks are on the rise, traditional ragging is down,” says a correspondent of an engineering college.
Colleges to blame
Officials of the Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education (APSCHE) say anti-ragging committees are active in colleges where managements take keen interest; but in most colleges there is hardly any check.
APSCHE Secretary Satti Reddy says ragging incidents have come down drastically in the last two years owing to measures like sensitisation and keeping the juniors away from seniors for a few months initially.
Laxities creep in
Officials, however, concede that laxities have crept into the system. Earlier, APSCHE made different films on ragging highlighting the Supreme Court guidelines and the CDs were distributed to the colleges. Now, there is hardly any such activity.
Conducting ‘Freshers’ Day’ by the college at the beginning of academic year within the college premises were some of the measures suggested by the APSCHE as it felt that such events give juniors a more conducive atmosphere to mingle with seniors in the presence of teachers and ultimately reduce misunderstandings. But many colleges ignore the directions.
