Students and teachers in colleges across Tamil Nadu are in a fix as there is no clarity on when classes are to begin again. The colleges have been closed for a week, following the anti-Sri Lanka agitations that rocked the State.
An official at the department of higher education said the date of reopening will be decided at a meeting to be held on Monday morning.
However, reports that colleges were slated to re-open on Monday caused confusion among students and teachers as they had not received any communication from their institutions to that effect.
Asked whether they were preparing for classes on Monday, a professor in a city college said, “There has been no official communication but there is a lot of confusion. Hostel students have returned from their hometowns.”
Class representatives in many arts colleges sent texts to their classmates asking them to arrive on Monday at 11 a.m., but modified their instructions by evening and asked them not to come. “We were asked to bring our reports of practical
tests. But by evening we were told to await a fresh communication,” said a student.
Teachers in aided colleges faced a different kind of problem as they were unsure if they had to go to college and sign the attendance register during the closure. Some teachers were informally told that just as the closure was not preceded by any official instruction, there would be no official orders on reopening either.
As most teachers and students believed that with the passing of the resolution on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva, the protests would die down, confusion prevailed.Private engineering colleges were also in a dilemma. “In the evening, we were asked by Education department officials to remain shut on Monday. Our students, hailing from other States have gone home and it
will take at least four days for them to make arrangements and come back,” said the chairman of a group of colleges.
