Awaaz’s efforts on campus reopening
The amount of rising protests in the last few days by the student community has clearly indicated the apparent uncertainty and vagueness in the plans, that the administration presents in several official and unofficial forms, and the existing lack of communication with the students regarding the reopening of campus. Awaaz, along with the students’ senate is also going to press on conducting an Open House, but simply convincing the administration to start working on a plan and releasing, what we shall call a ‘precise plan’ is not going to solve everything. This is so because there are many problems specific to certain classes of students and there should be the inclusion of their issues while preparing a plan. The feasibility of the plan might be in question if a major number of problems aren’t solved, depending on when and how are the students going to be called back.
To build a proper base for discussion in the Open House, if it happens, or to at least present it in front of the entire KGP community (comprising of current UG/PG/RS students, faculty, staff or alumni), we have sent a proposal to people in all the departments, through Department Representatives of the current or previous academic year. Here is a screenshot of the mail we have sent —
According to this, they are supposed to talk to students from different batches in their dept about the very specific problems they are facing currently and might face later if the campus doesn’t reopen before a certain date for a certain group of students. For example - the students willing to do a summer internship in any of the research labs in Kharagpur, (since most of the internship programs by other research institutes in India and abroad have been suspended or are on hold) should be allowed to visit the campus for summer at least. Similarly, batches that have a large number of labs pending that if conducted online are no different from not being conducted at all should be called for the entire academic year. In this way, there will be a compilation of such problems specific to possibly a certain batch or group of students that should be accounted for while building a plan. In these lines, we request students from all batches and the people whom we have mailed our proposal to come in contact and discuss the specific problems before Thursday (March 18th) noon. In case you miss the deadline, please directly connect with us. We shall then compile all the information and send it to people in the administration and the students’ senate which could also be the base of discussion for the Open House.
We request students to diagnose the situation closely with foresight to realize what permanent voids could be left in their training based on the career plans and academic goals they have, in case the campus doesn’t reopen before it is too late. And the classification of late also varies across different groups of students as explained earlier. So they should proactively come forward in this initiative so that we can properly document their problems.
We request the students mailed by us to circulate a mail in their department if they haven’t done it already so that others can know- whom to contact if they have something to point out.
