The classes and class tests had all ended just fine and students were in an enjoying mood on the golden late autumn afternoon. Up came an eight-some gang of youth and opened fire on a BCL adda sipping tea at a stall at the BAU. Two were spot dead and 12 others also received bullet injuries some of whose condition was critical.

Campus terrorism has not moved an inch towards dissipation and a total elimination that must be here for the universities to be universities again. Rather it seems to have aggravated recently going against the nation's fervent expectations generated by the new government's unequivocal protestations on the point. That the victims were BCL leaders and activists do point fingers at possible perpetrators specially because of a state of tense confrontation that was prevailing on that campus. If the government has failed to contain campus violence, the BNP has failed even to go on record as repudiating violent crimes by their cadre. This does not at all augur well for either the universities or for the national situation as a whole.

Al! well-meaning quarters as well as the government have missed a vital point of this terribly mind-boggling problem of how to eliminate campus terrorism without the parties' withdrawing their cadres from there. The first requirement of making any headway in the matter is that the student parties must cease to be wings of political parties. These were so for all of the glorious years of students' contributions to this nation's liberation.

The nurture of student fronts must go. Or otherwise AL or BNP couldn't be expected to act against themselves in the universities. It is not that BCL and JCD are simply battling one another. It Is very patently AL and BNP fighting each other violently in a particular area by using youthful followers. And the nation s academic excellence as well as quality of future leadership is being killed off very sustainedly as a result.

The killers of the BAU massacre must not be allowed to get away or the government's credibility will terribly suffer.