Here are some abnormal things that happen every day, as if they were normal things to happen in a reputed institution proudly established to impart education. The blocks where the classrooms are, are locked by severely watchful guards at 9:05AM (time marked by neon red atomic clocks) when classes begin at 9AM, so that students even a few seconds late are deliberately made to miss attendance. The same way, the blocks are locked at 10 AM and 2 PM, and students are forced to wait for fifteen minutes before being allowed into class, by which time attendance will already have been taken.
Professors receive stern emails by an explanation-denying management to not mark students’ attendance, in case they are late for some reason, even if they inform their classmates that they will arrive momentarily. They also get maliciously prohibited to give students asynchronous assignments to assist them to reach the required attendance. Students are smited with arbitrary rules, so arbitrarily conjured that even the academic counsellors are unaware of them.
10 days before the commencement of mid-semester examinations, which contribute to 25% of the final grade for most written papers, students were informed that medical leave applications would not be considered for the exams; they were asked to meet their counsellors regarding attendance shortage.
A student reports: “I went to the counsellor and ‘miraculously, she was present’, only to find out it was completely useless to go to her. She was completely ‘helpless’ and had almost no clue why ‘these things were happening’. When I asked her why my medical forms weren’t being accepted, she told me nobody had informed her as to why.” Another student reports: “I was very sick. I had dengue, and had to go back to my hometown, and missed classes for a week. Mid-semester exams were near when I came back. I had to desperately ping-pong between the HOD, the counsellor, and the Student ‘Welfare’ Office, more times than I can count, all the while ‘dealing with’ classes, and suffering from post-disease fatigue. I was told that my medical leave might not be accepted because it was signed by the doctor on a ‘ruled piece of paper’. It’s absolutely ridiculous. This ping-pong through baseless bureaucracy went on for some five days, where I was just running between offices, as if I was begging them to let me write exams for a course I paid for. I was in terrible anxiety and complete uncertainty if my hall-ticket would be unblocked until the very previous day to the first exam. Then, very conveniently, they unblocked it. Umm, I mean, thank-you?” Some students’s medical leave certificates have been rejected on ludicrous grounds like those had been acquired from licensed medical clinics, not big superspeciality hospitals. In fear of this, students have had to spend insane chunks of money on consulting doctors at overpriced hospitals. Otherwise, the medical documents were thrown back at the students as unacceptable by inefficient, impudent officers who treat students like stray dogs.
Christ University was already infamous among students for its hateful and money-gobbling regulations. They can now boast of having surpassed their villany. This semester, the new VC has made a new rule, that mandated students to have 75% attendance per subject to be eligible to write the respective mid-semester papers; for which students received emails, absurdly informing them about the papers they would not be eligible to write. Attendance up until 3 days prior to the commencement of mid-semester exams was considered, while classes went on till the last day. A substantial portion of the student-body suspects that no preparatory leaves were given to students before the papers at all, again, as a deliberate attempt to have them miss classes to prepare to score good grades. You, as a rational human being, are encouraged to think about this.
Proof-backed reports have been produced by students that attendance was cut for classes that never took place, for missing fests, to make time for which those classes were cancelled. No information about such curtailment of attendance was given to the students and attendance for the fests were not updated until the last minute. Deliberate curtailment of information from students is not limited to this. Even though students were told that their hall-tickets would not be unblocked once the exams commenced, there was no information as to the hall-ticket not being available for download post-first exam. Students who were denied to write the first paper, and therefore did not download the hall-ticket prior to it, found that the management had made the hall-ticket inaccessible. To acquire a hall-ticket, again, quite pathetically and predictably, the students were subjected to a fine and miss several minutes of exam-writing time.
Students who, because of these obnoxious circumstances, were unable to write the exams are required to pay a fine of rupees 700 for each course; here again, is an undeniable confirmation of the rabid money-gobbling nature of Christ University management, because until previous semesters, the mid-sem repeat fine was Rs. 400. On top of this, there is a reduction of 15% in the marks that students score in the supplementary papers, along with a blacklisting.
Earlier, as mentioned before, penalty for not meeting required attendance was applicable only to end-semester exams, with policies regarding it fluctuating each semester post-pandemic. The fine for an attendance-booster has been increased exponentially each successive semester, and by thousands of rupees for each percent of attendance below the required minimum 85%.
You, as a rational thinking being, are again encouraged to think about this.
