09/04/2019
NIT AGARTALA’s WOMEN STUDENTS PROTEST THE HOSTEL RULES!
The students of NIT Agartala have been protesting outside their administration office, the rules of the hostel are so restrictive that women are not allowed out of the hostel before 6 AM and not allowed outside the hostel after 5.30 PM on weekends and 6 PM on weekdays. The boarders are told, the same thing that women in Regional Institute of Education, Bhopal are told that if women students step out of the hostel, snakes will bite them. We wonder if these snakes only bite women!
If women students don’t give their daily attendance between 6.15 PM to 6.30 PM then the warden takes it upon herself to discipline the ‘unruly’ students. The leave applications and procedures are so strict that women have to intimate the hostel authorities five days before they have to take leaves for going home.
Women are now demanding that they be permitted to order food 24x7 and the access to Library and food complex be made 24x7 and demanding outing till at least 10 PM. Women are demanding this because the access to campus is equally important in securing a higher education for one’s holistic growth.
We are time again told that the streets and the nights are ‘dangerous’ for us and that we are being locked up for our own ‘good.’ What good is it to live in constant fear? Fear, not only of violence, but also the threat of it which binds us to the shackles that chain us. We fear that if we are late by a few minutes, it is us who will be made answerable to morally loaded judgments, who will be ‘penalised’ and ‘punished’ for violating rules. It is us who will be threatened with being thrown out of the hostel and the college. When we come to demand the change of hostel rules that render us vulnerable to ‘disciplinary action,’ the college administration tells us that “If something were to happen to us, they will not be responsible.” This hollow claim of ‘responsibility’ is nothing but a weapon when in fact they take no responsibility of the everyday violence of their rules!
Now, the administration is trying to placate the protesters by calling them ‘in’ for closed meetings. We stand in full solidarity with the women protesters! In stead, the administration has called up parents of the protesting students, threatening them with action.