DUTA Expresses Solidarity with ongoing Students' Movement in Jadavpur University
The DUTA expresses solidarity with the ongoing Students' Movement in Jadavpur University and condemns the JU Vice Chancellor's decision to invite the police in order to crush the massive students' protest against hooliganism and gendered violence in the university campus. JU students have been participating in a democratic assertion of their collective desire to make the university Vice Chancellor and the state's police accountable for their knee-jerk authoritarianism and arrogant refusal to make themselves accountable to the students' demand for justice.
The JU Students' Movement is not an isolated uprising of students. It has a logical connection with students' movements current in other parts of the nation wherein, due to the introduction of corporate models of academic governance and the thrust towards commercialization and privatization of education, university officials frequently take recourse to crushing voices of dissent and disagreement. The barbaric attitude of the HPU administration towards students protesting against fee-hike, as well as the instances of equally inhuman repression of students by the DU Vice Chancellor in the past year, show up a pattern of intolerance towards collective demands for social justice. Coupled with this is the ongoing attempt, by the same authorities, to dismantle progressive conventions and statutory processes of justice. JU's failure to credibly implement the Supreme Court's Guidelines, following the Vishakha Judgment, to deal comprehensively with sexual harassment at the workplace, as well as the Delhi University's summary suspension of Ordinance XV-D following the promulgation of a new law on Sexual Harassment, are clear indications of the danger to democracy and social justice in institutions of higher learning.
The DUTA condemns the West Bengal Education Minister's arrogant reaction to the students' demand for removal of the JU Vice Chancellor. Minister Partha Chatterjee's remark that students are free to enroll in another university if they are unhappy with the VC's mode of functioning, reeks of an insensitive mindset and ignorance of how public institutions should function. Public institutions are also accountable to the public and cannot be run in accordance with private whims. Hence, rather than asking students to leave the university, the Education Minister should support the demand for students' inclusion and representation in the statutory decision-making bodies of the university.
| NANDITA NARAIN President, DUTA |
HARISH KHANNA Secretary, DUTA |
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