Are Students Safe Anymore on College Campuses?

I am shattered. I don’t know what has happened to our educational institutes. Some days, I come across news about the sufferings and plight of PhD students whose work, most of the time, gets rejected or berated by their guides or supervisors just because of personal bias or reasons best known to them only.

Then another heart-wrenching issue is student suicides. Don’t know if you need to look into specific data or charts or not, but one day or another you will keep hearing about how students are ending their lives inside campuses. Some do it because of mental harassment, despair, hopelessness, or competition, but many others do it because of ragging.

Where Is the Unity in Campus Politics?

Just don’t know how to come to terms with reality. As always, I stand vindicated, as I always feel that college and institute campuses are abodes of learning first and politics second. You say college politics is necessary—do it, but not on college campuses. Do it inside party offices. Raise issues within the democratic framework. But in the name of student welfare, if you go and torture students, be it mentally or physically, it’s outright criminality with which no sane person could agree.

Of late, female students have become the soft target. I don’t know where the security is. And please, stop it. Don’t try to propagate your political slugfest or attempt to gain political mileage just because something has happened and your political patrons differ from the party in power. Because where were you when a similar case happened in your own state and colleges? I have never seen a single incident where people across political parties have come together and strongly raised their voice against any dastardly incident that happened on a college campus. Either the opposition shouts or the ruling party tries to suppress the issue. Why don’t all of them come together and ensure student safety?

In Conclusion

We go to college to study. It’s not as if we go there considering it’s a torture trap. So many students chase their future in their chosen stream of study. What if, suddenly, the very campus becomes just like a ‘concentration camp’ in the sense that students suffer, a few days of candle marches follow, the usual protests by the opposition take place, and then everything returns to normalcy? Where is the humanity? Who thinks of student welfare? Those strongly advocating student politics forget that many times these very young politicians are corrupt to the core. If they are themselves corrupt and have a bad reputation and shoddy educational and academic credentials, what else do you expect? I think students are much safer without these student politicians.

What’s your view on it? Campus politics can only take you to the dark ages, which students realise only when it’s too late!