An acute power crisis being experienced in south Tamil Nadu was one of the issues that came up for discussion at the Senate meeting of Madurai Kamaraj University (MKU) on Monday.
Introducing an adjournment motion on power, S. Krishnasamy said that the MKU, being one of the top universities and a university with potential for excellence, should seek exemption from power cuts as long power outages affected its research activity. He further said that despite being smaller in size, Bharathiar University had a central generator that took care of power shortage. The Gandhigram Rural Institute and Manonmaniam Sundaranar University had explored alternative sources of energy such as use of solar panels, he said and suggested that the MKU could go for a central generator and also explore alternative sources of energy.
Vice-Chancellor Kalyani Mathivanan replied that she had been taking serious efforts to tackle the power crisis and alternative sources would be considered. An assessment of the requirements was under way. Generators would be made available for both the men’s and women’s hostels.
Another issue that saw an intense debate was the move to change the name of Department of Manuscriptology as a statutory department as Department of Anthropology and merge it with School of Tamil Studies. The members raised opposition to the move and said that at the last Academic Council meeting itself it was decided that Manuscriptology and Anthropology should be with two separate departments. P. Chellathurai said that Anthropology could not be hijacked by language departments as the subject was multi-dimensional with history, culture and language.
Dr. Kalyani, replying to the debate, said that during the last 12 years there was no professor in the Department of Manuscriptology and not many students were aspiring to take the course. She said, “We cannot have a museum; we need a functional department.” It was resolved to have the Department of Anthropology under School of Tamil Studies.