No protests, nasty surprises or ragging. Day One at Delhi University was a complete contrast to the stormy admission season witnessed recently.
Sixty-three colleges opened their gates on Monday to around 60,000 freshers and nearly two lakh students in all, in addition to about 10,000 teachers. On campus, everyone seemed to be going about the task of getting acquainted with the new classes, classmates, students and teachers calmly.
“I dressed up especially for today; it was the day I had dreamed all summer. But it turned out to be very different from what I had expected,” said Panchika Gupta, a B. Com student at Shri Ram College of Commerce.
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Her school friend Sahiba, who attended her first Economics (Honours) class, explained their disappointment.
“We were given an orientation session in the morning at the auditorium, which was accompanied by a powerpoint presentation. Then we went to class, where we were given the timetable. We just introduced ourselves to each other. We had nothing to talk about and I was grateful to have a friend from school with me,” she said, adding that going by what she had seen on television and read in the papers all summer, she had expected a lot of drama on day one.
It was the same story in every other college.
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“I just sat in class and now I have plans to meet up my school friends who are in other colleges,” said Ayushi, a B.Sc student at Ramjas College, where a free lunch buffet on the lawns ensured full attendance during lunchtime.
Protests in the university, a staple throughout the year on any important occasion, were also missing.
Other than placing big signages for freshers that read “welcome” and whiteboards that encouraged them to sign on to a “no ragging” policy and personal introductions, student organisations were mostly quite with the usual sloganeering missing.
Vice-Chancellor Dinesh Singh and his entourage, which till last year usually descended in any college to check whether classes were happening or not on the first day, were also missing.
Also, the dreaded marathon interviews that were to take place to appoint ad-hoc teachers on the day were also held back, with the University Grants Commission writing to the university and directing them to continue with the teachers who were there on the last working day of last year to avoid any inconvenience.