After stalling the biometric IDs — to keep a check on teacher attendance — proposal at the Executive Council meeting, Delhi University teachers also showed their opposition to the proposed semester system for the undergraduate level at the General Body Meeting last Tuesday .
At the General Body meeting, the faculty protested an “anti-democratic” method in the implementation of the semester system.
The General Body approved an “action plan” to realise its demands which are the scrapping of the semester system proposal and the biometric attendance system.
After the GBM a protest march took place at the V.C’s office and an interesting banner expressing their displeasure against the proposed initiatives was to be seen. It read get-well-soon banner with red roses, wishing their VC a speedy recovery.
After this unconventional form of protest , it is to be noted that teachers will take out a march from Mandi House to the ministry of human resource development on December 22 and similar protests will continue into January 2010 as well.
In the previous DU beat issue , we talked extensively about DUTA’s grouse against the imposition of the semester system in an allegedly undemocratic manner . The grounds stated for the opposition to the biometric attendance system are numerous with DUTA president Aditya Narayan Mishra citing it as a “ stifling practice”. The other grounds for objections against the system include it being restrictive to their academic freedom , curtailing academic inputs and the lack of infrastructure conducive for the success of such a system. “The new system will restrict the movement of teachers, which could affect their input since the teachers have to go to various libraries after classes for research,” added Mr. Mishra.
Vice Chancellor, Deepak Pental , however clarified that it was not a question of the teachers integrity and the purpose of the GBM was to discuss the proposal, not impose it. However he did state ,”teachers are required to put in a minimum of 18 hours per week. The proposed system is just a way to monitor the attendance of the teachers.”
Some however felt state that the proposed biometric system would not drastically effect them and in fact help do away with the general perception that the teachers do not take their classes regularly.
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