News

Marks Moderation Maddens Students

Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr

Fourth year in the running, despite vehement protests, the students of Delhi University continue to face the problem of marks moderation. The issue is that there is actually no sound basis for this moderation and not all colleges have been subject to it.

Ever since results have been declared for the annual year 2008 – 2009, infuriated students from well known colleges of the north and south campus have been protesting outside the Vice chancellor’s office demanding an explanation for the scaling down of their marks.

The list of colleges affected include Sriram Ram College Of Commerce, Lady Sri Ram College for Women , MirandaHouse, Gargi and Jesus and Mary College .In most of these colleges, both the students and staff ,have actively participated in the remonstration against the allegedly baseless moderation of marks. Almost all departments have faced this problem.

In the mathematics department of LSR, a minimum of 8 marks has been lopped off for most students, which is a loss of almost three percent. The Economics , English and Sociology departments have lost a minimum of four marks .In Delhi University where competition is so stiff, the moderation affects students’ university ranking. Students from these colleges have also lost out on first divisions as a consequence of this The philosophy department of MH has been of the victim not only this year but also the year before this. This moderation especially happens in Logic, which is the most scoring subject of the department. Last year, 5 marks had been deducted from the logic paper in spite of the paper being scoring. This year, a lot of students had to bear the brunt as marks have been cut left, right and centre. A student from the Philosophy dept, 2nd year adds on ” We did not expect this to happen. I myself had got 22 in my internal assessment but now my marks are scaled down to 14. Philosophy is as it is not a very scoring subject and logic is the only paper where we can fetch high marks, but sadly this has been very shattering”.

Regular protests in the form of dharnas have been held outside the Vice Chancellor’s office. Statistical proof has been presented. Concerned authorities reasoned out the scaling by saying that the system is unbiased and is done in colleges and for students whose college average of marks show a great amount of aberrance from the university average of marks. A message was also passed on from the Dean of Students Welfare that it was impossible to revert the marks but from the following year a bigger moderation committee would be formed in order to avoid such problems. This announcement was met with even greater objection because the idea of these protests was the abolition of such a committee.

Also marks for the students with low college averages have been scaled down and hence the logic of uniform marking doesn’t hold either. The students are now demanding a rational basis for these steps from the Vice Chancellor.

Journalism has been called the “first rough draft of history”. D.U.B may be termed as the first rough draft of DU history. Freedom to Express.

Comments are closed.