A young man or woman lands up in a university with a lot of aspirations to acquire knowledge and enjoy a kind of freedom which has been a dream all his/her life. In schools and colleges, parental care and supervision is quite intensive; they are usually escorted to and from their schools and there are restrictions on their outing and mixing with outsiders. To many, this is required to ensure their safety and keep them on track.
As children grow up, parental supervision gets somewhat relaxed. Maybe that is a natural phenomenon in making them more responsible to look after themselves and take charge of their own affairs gradually.
We all are aware of the kind of competition and uncertainty in getting admitted into a public university in the country. Only the best of the best can get through such a tremendous race for excellence. Shouldn’t it be a journey in tranquillity, peace, and assurance where one can afford to bring about all faculty to brighten and sharpen learning, communication skill, ingenuity, and creativity to their utmost?
The government spends a lot of public money in providing accommodation to students and other facilities they need to nurture and develop their faculty not only in curricular but extracurricular skills as well. Parents dream of their children coming out with honed ability, enhanced knowledge, and acquired skills to face the challenges in life.
Of late, the state of our universities is being much talked about. There has been dismay that our universities are nowhere in global or even regional rankings. Leaving aside the standard of teaching and learning, merely surviving in the campus with dignity and honour and coming out in one piece has become a challenge for many students.
Exams and classes are being withheld, services are being disrupted and campus life being chaotic and unsafe. National dailies are aplenty with news of clashes at university campuses, telling us that these are a consequence of maintaining “domination” by various student factions.
It is also a fact that many involved in such battles of domination of university hostels and facilities are not even students. University authorities are naturally helpless because most of the troublemakers are powerful and command hooligans with sticks, iron rods, and even firearms which the university authority naturally cannot match to confront them, nor can they call upon law enforcers every now and then because of the sanctity of autonomous institutions.
Another major issue is accommodation in the university halls. These are highly subsidized for both food and lodging. The idea is noble to make learning affordable. There cannot be anything nobler than providing fine accommodation and food at such subsidized rates for students. This is a great sacrifice the nation is making from taxpayers’ money for the future progeny.
But who actually are the beneficiaries? Who is snatching this from the genuine students in the name of domination and politics? Even if the students are allowed to stay, they attach a lot of difficult strings to it. It is almost impossible for a common student to get allotment of a room without mercy of the powers who dominate that particular hall or university.
The experience of students who step in as newcomers is simply horrifying. He is welcome in the banner of most dominant political wings or student factions. He is subjected to intimidation to make himself always available for any call or political activity, even if he does not subscribe to their idea. The situation has turned full of danger and uncertainty following a few cases of murder in the halls; general students and parents are understandably very frightened.
Many argue that students are the pathfinders of the nation which they have demonstrated in the past during national crises. Nobody can deny the role of students in leading our language movement and ultimately winning our freedom. Hence we have a glorious past of student politics which is unambiguous. To maintain this, there must be ample scope for them to participate in politics. This will be a training ground for them to prepare as future leaders confronting political issues of much greater dimension.
But if we look at campus politics now, what do we see? Battle grounds of confrontations armed with hockey sticks, machetes, and even guns can be anything but politics.
As an impact of this, many students are seeking entry to private universities even if they could get to a public one. The pressure on the parents consequently has increased as these young men and women would like to go to costlier private universities. Their justifications are that they wouldn’t be persecuted by political activists and can concentrate on studies and would stand a chance to complete their curriculum in a given time frame.
But days probably may not be very far when politics will also make its headway into private universities. How can we afford to leave aside such a great number of our young generation from the path of self-realization, self determination, and fight for their rights? Will students have a choice to remain apolitical?
Let me end this piece with an anecdote where a student from Bangladesh landed up in a Canadian university during Covid period in early 2021. He was greeted by his professor sponsor who came in his car to welcome him. As the professor alighted, his giant labrador jumped out from the other side which quite sacred the newly arrived student. The professor assured him of his benignity and handed him over a package with about 10 books, a laptop, and some food items. The Bangladeshi student was taken aback with such an act of kindness and warmth at the very first meeting and deeply touched by his human quality.
When can we expect to see such miracles happening in our universities?
Brig Gen Qazi Abidus Samad, ndc, psc (Retd) is a freelance contributor. Email: showkat1959@gmail.com.