The Open House, October 27th 2017
The Open House Event with The Director, Dr. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti , supposed to be conducted from 7 PM to 9 PM in Netaji Auditorium, had to be shifted to Tagore Open Air Theatre due to the extremely high attendance of students owing to the recent events on the campus which have had the students on edge with the Institute Administration maintaining a stony silence with very intermittent reports from the Student Senate.
A short summary for all the readers is given in this article after which we will go into detail regarding all the various types of questions that were raised and the responses that we, the students, received in a separate transcript document we are currently proofreading. The entire event, officially supposed to only go until about 9 PM stretched till 11 PM due to the continuous cross-questioning that our director undertook from all the students asking the questions. Due to the fact that there was videography of the entire session done by TFPS, we do not think that covering all his responses to the innumerable questions that he faced is something we should do as part of this article. We will be releasing a detailed transcript for all the events of the Open House separately as well. Hence, we have divided all the questions faced into six categories and summarized the general response structure that we received from him.
Furthermore, we would like to point out the whole session was emotionally charged, both from the side of the students who at times and on multiple occasions became disrespectful of the director and the entire gathering and, from the side of the director who had to face relentless cross questioning with higher and higher tones from the students when he had already clarified in the beginning that he will try to answer every question that will be asked of him to the best of his knowledge and capacity.
We, as TSA, feel that though some of the answers might have been unsatisfactory according to students and us but that, in no way, gives students the right to shout down the director as he puts down all the clarifications in front of students. This is something that clearly should’ve been avoided since the director would’ve anyway had to answer the questions posed to him which he did to the best of his capacity.
He is our highest seat of authority and he has a lot more responsibilities that just the issue at hand and he should be given the respect due of his station even while we demand answers to even the harshest of questions. He came to the session to answer and face the questions of the students so the questions could’ve been conducted in a more well organised fashion. At multiple points during the entire session, the students had to be requested to behave in a more civil manner for a more constructive discussion to go forward and we feel really sorry that a situation such as that had to arise. It appeared as if the students had already decided on a verdict and were just looking for sound-bytes to pronounce him guilty as charged in this public session when the aim of this discussion should have been a clarification of points of issues and then a constructive discussion on a methodology for the future.
He did accede to a lot of the points raised, such as the fact that we weren’t prepared for a lot of emergency cases and he gave assurances that all these things are being worked upon by the administration.
We feel that those assurances would probably have been taken in a much more positive light if we did not have the shadow of the tragic events of Saturday, 21st October before us.
There were a lot of questions where the director claimed to not knowing enough details and requested to pose all those questions again along with the Action Plan document or in different separate meetings that he asked the students to mail him so that he can give a more satisfactory answer after getting all the details that he can relevant to the questions raised.
The crux of the discussion and the corrective measures that were decided upon can be broadly classified as under:
The Event
He accepted that there was a need for an enquiry due to the conflicting reports from the students and the BC Roy representatives and he will get the selection of an enquiry officer done within the next three days. There were multiple other questions and cross-questions all of which get covered under that summarizing line.
BCRTH Issues
He accepted that a complaint portal was a need of the hour and he’ll look into expediting that as soon as possible with the allowance to put in complaints to past cases as well on this portal. Furthermore, he requested the students to come up with an Action Plan List of all the other important points that need to be covered as well as possible along with suggested measures from the students’ side on which he said prompt response will be made available about the feasibility of each measure. He agreed that he had not followed up on a detailed analysis of how well the BC Roy Hospital Committee has been functioning of which there had been only two meetings this year and one the last year- in June 2016, June 2017 and then on 26th October 2017, respectively. Beyond this, he agreed to his mistake resulting in the misinformed status of the Hall Senate when asked about the ‘State-of-the-Art’ Ambulances due to him sharing whatever information he had with them at the past meetings out of a need to keep them apprised of the developments. He also mentioned that they have started looking into procuring newer ambulances and/or upgrading the current ones. Beyond this, an issue was also raised into conducting detailed review of the proficiency of the doctors in BC Roy to which he he agreed on getting the administrative procedure into motion.
Counselling Centre
The director has agreed to put a regular methodology in place to review the entire Counselling Centre and the BC Roy on a regular basis to maintain standards after multiple complaints of cases of negligence and insensitive attitudes were raised during the Open House by the students. This will be a part of the action plan. Furthermore, he said that there will be a look into expediting the process for long-term parents stay at the institute for under constant care and surveillance cases and how to better handle anonymity while letting people know to watch out for their friends’ health. Regarding cases of malpractices, he said that there needs to be an enquiry and a review and the Complaints portal needs to get ready as soon as possible to help in this. He also told that there was a round of new recruitment to the Counselling Centre that just concluded and another round will begin soon so as to fill vacant positions. He also talked multiple times about Institute’s very recent tie-up attempts with YourDost and ICall and other organisations while being unaware of the fact that SWG had themselves raised the need for these during sessions about 2–3 years ago when the Counselling centre refused to accept online counselling chat measures as useful. He also discussed about the measures being taken for integrating Mental Health Assessment Tests with the ERP System.
Professors
The director discussed the training sessions for sensitisation that professors are being asked to be a part of and the measures that he’d been undertaking to increase personal student-professor interactions. Even beyond that, he tried to iterate on the fact that any accusations about professors need to come to him and he needs to initiate a Prima Facie enquiry before a formal enquiry can be launched and asked students to revert back to him about cases that they felt that had been missed and he didn’t respond to. He asked to raise those as points to the VP so that they can be raised along with the Action Plan or in a separate meeting that the student interested can set up after mailing him. Furthermore, he also commented that there was a lack of communication between students and Professors due to distrust which just made things more difficult and he wished this gap would be bridged.
Students
Plans were discussed to try to get a few more students trained along with GSec Student Welfare to handle counselling responsibilities. The general apathy of the student community towards events in the institute or their own batchmates was also highlighted, citing the examples of the three previous Open Houses which got cancelled due to extremely low turnout from the students. It raised the question that had an event of this magnitude not occurred, would there have been a similar turnout? There were a lot of harsh questioning during which he got severely agitated at the students asking questions because of the clearly unneeded harsh tone of the questioning. He raised the very important point that for a lot of students, their IIT family is more important to them than their own family because of the lives they’ve had to live before coming here. Yet, the students do not trust each other and are not willing to talk to each other. As a result, if the student community falters in maintaining the brotherhood amongst themselves, there is not really anything that will improve the situation. He also discussed his plans for a room in every hall where some counselling activity will be held every day of the week and asked for better suggestions from the student community to be forwarded to him as part of the Action Plan, if possible.
Parents
In this point, TSA feels that the issue was given a slightly darker tone by our director as he discussed examples of the sort of issues that the Institute had to manage and using that as a case in point for it not always being the Institute’s fault. We agree that his points, mainly about cases where the parents do not want to work with the system to help their kids and instead made it harder to handle, but that in no way changes the fact that there have been multiple instances of negligence according to multiple accounts both at BC Roy and at the Counselling Centre. On a different note, he also agreed that he didn’t have many details about parents who had to face difficulties to find a place to stay in the institute while taking care of their ward while he/she undergoes treatment at either BC Roy or the Counselling Centre and requested the students to bring it to his notice so that it could be expedited as fast as possible.
In general, for quite a few suggestions, such as the feasibility of an Air Ambulance, he had to raise the point that the IIT works on a tight budget which for this year was 533 Crores only considering the number of activities that are simultaneously taking place here and feasibility is something that needs a primary check before following up on any measure they might discuss which is where measures such as this lose their feasibility since it would take an equivalent amount of time in the end. Along with this, as a good news, he gave an explanation for his absence from the Institute for the past few days, which he explained that it was on account of securing additional funds of 50 crores for the National Digital Library Project and then reiterated the vastness of his role as a Director, which prevents him from giving deeper and perfect answers to all the questions that were asked.
Now, as a conclusion from The Scholars’ Avenue, we have to raise the point that yes, there was negligence on point of BC Roy Technology Hospital based on reports of past incidences from the student community and the current event in question but the only way to fight against that negligence now and, to make sure that it never happens again is to constantly be on guard and report any untoward or unacceptable incident the moment it happens. We will have to keep the institute accountable and we hope the complaint portal comes up fast to expedite this.
To support or give points for the Action Plan, feel free to mail the VP at these addresses (mayank.iitkgp97@gmail.com, vptsg@hijli.iitkgp.ernet.in) and his facebook profile.
Further, a lot of the other points already finalised for the Action Plan are points that were raised back in 2009 as well yet the outcomes haven’t yielded any significantly concrete outcomes till now. This is something for the administration to ponder over and for the student community, something to discuss and increase accountability this time around for. The VP has promised to keep us apprised of the developments in this regard and we feel that we all should contribute as much as possible to this very crucial discussion that is coming now because we are finally moving from the realm of anger to how to use this anger in as constructive a manner as possible.
As an ending note, we’d like to focus on one point of the entire Open House, which is that there should be a deeper student bonding in the community and an attempt at less judgement by fellow batchmates, mainly because of the reason that no one really knows what the other person is going through and they only will if you talk and understand, and the moment understanding begins is when jealousy, arrogance and judgement ends. This is something that we feel doesn’t require any intervention by any administrative body and is something we can always work towards improving on our own as a student community.
To our professors reading this, you are as important a pillar of this institution as our students and we request you all to take five to ten minutes of your class time in the next class that you take to discuss this entire issue and share some informal points of view with the students and try to engage discussion. We feel that in an institution such as ours, it should never be the case of Us vs Them for Professors and Students, from either side of the coin. We both have to work together to ensure this college becoming even more successful as it grows.
To the students going to those classes, make this an effort to show the professors that you are not just those students who bunk classes without an aim or idea in life but you are also the students who are passionate about some things in life, having opinions of your own which can be discussed upon with the Professors and you are going to be the alumni to make this college and those professors proud.
To the Director, Sir, we thank you for coming to TOAT and being a part of the discussion for three and a half hours and we’ll try to make sure that as much of it gets turned into productive results as possible and we’d request for your continued support and guidance in all of it. We heard your point that we should’ve started with reaching out to you for the full picture before publishing and we will definitely follow up on it in the future.
The Scholars’ Avenue will try to keep you updated with all the events that happen and if you ever find something happening that you feel is something that needs attention, please let us know and we will be proactive in handling it.
