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KALEIDOSCOPE

Yawning trust gap at RU

Syed Fattahul Alim
Gradually, the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place. Friday's lead story of this paper titled "RU at fault" tried to shed some light on the genesis of what actually ails the Rajshahi University and why the atmosphere in the campus is getting volatile day by day. At the same time, it also provided some insight into what prompted the BCL cadres to swoop, alongside the police, on the demonstrating general students.
The media reports initially focused on police brutality and the brazen display of arms by BCL activists. This triggered the predictable knee-jerk response from the ruling Al leadership aiming to defend what its student front, BCL, had done while at the same time take some face-saving measures. The theory of infiltration into BCL and other familiar rhetoric laced with blame game continued all the same.
But what the AL leadership, or the government for that matter, failed to see was that it was an issue in which general students', not of a particular political group's, interest was involved. The AL leadership should have been more circumspect about the issue before taking an instant stance in favour of any of the parties in the fray. They should have questioned the RU authority's mindless action against general students' protest rally. The RU administration's hurried decision to close the university sine die, asking students to vacate their dormitories within a short notice, showed how indifferent and insensitive it was towards the residential students' problems. The government did not care to look into these issues at all, but was gung ho about defending the indefensible which only complicated the matter further.
The gun-toting BCL cadres' behaviour was reprehensible. Equally inexcusable was the abandon with which the police used disproportionate force against the students who were only holding a peaceful protest march within the precincts of the university.
Unfortunately, the government did not give a damn about what the protesting general students of RU had to say. Were all those students anti-AL or anti-government?
The government should rather focus on the real issue of why the university administration was so impatient and insensitive towards the students' grievances so much so that it had to call police and silence them through using brute force. And what was the mystery behind the armed BCL cadres' getting involved in the violence? Did they join the police to suppress the dissenting students just out of fun, or that they were asked by someone in authority to do so? What has the RU administration to say in this regard?
The RU administration is caught up in a mess of its own creation, but it is unfairly making the general students pay the price for that.
Tuition fees hike is a serious matter. Whatever justification it may have, the university administration cannot just impose it on the students unilaterally and in an arbitrary manner. The students have also the right to know why and under what circumstances such a decision has been taken. The university administration has utterly failed to take the general students into confidence in the matter. Worse yet, it has behaved in the most undemocratic manner by resorting to force rather than dialogue in resolving the dispute. Clearly, there is a huge communication gap between the general students and the university authority.
So, it is hardly surprising that the university authority is becoming more and more dependent on the police and its henchmen to deal with issues relating to general students' interests.
The Daily Star report on RU, as mentioned at the beginning of the write-up, has also laid bare the real reasons behind the RU authority's decisions like tuition fees hike and running of evening courses on commercial basis. As narrated in the report, those measures were geared to meet the huge fund deficit that the university has been running since long. But why must the student agree to pay from their pocket to finance a deficit the creation of which is not their fault, but of the questionable, often partisan, decisions that the RU administration had taken in the past to recruit teachers and other staff without taking mandatory approval from the University Grants Commission (UGC)? Again, why should the general students allow their teachers to get busy with the easy money earning projects in the name of special courses?
These were valid points of difference between the common students and the university administration. Evidently, the RU authority did not give any thought to the possibility of resolving the problem through discussions with the general students. But they should now begin to think in this line. To that end, it must open the university as well as its residential halls and restore normality on the campus as soon as possible.
The RU authority must avoid its dependence on external forces for resolving disputes with students. And to build rapport with general students, it should arrange for holding elections to the students' representative bodies, i.e., the student unions.
It is worthwhile to note that like RU, other public universities are also facing a similar trust gap between the administration and the common students. The gaps should be bridged by allowing students to play a greater role in the affairs of the university, especially in the areas that have to do with general students' interests.