Year end: Protests that shook DU this academic year

Deriving from a letter to the VC (Vice Chancellor) the Delhi University and Colleges Library Employees Association (DUCLEA) protested early in August to initiate the implementation of the Recruitment Rules Review Committee Rules and the ACP/MACP Pay Scale Committee Report. A lot of other demands like removal of library attendance system from college libraries were also raised. However, the familiar stalling of rightful demands has led to the stagnation of the report for over 18 (now 26) months.

Featured Image Credits: Namrata Randhawa for DU Beat

Constantly headlining the campus news flash, Delhi School.of Journalism has seen one of its most charged years given to resistance, as yet. The struggles of DSJ students to attain a reasonable quality of education by requesting the concerned authorities to justify the hefty fees were multiple but in vain; ineffective due to  delay in “administrative/authoritative approval”. A month later in September, 2018, inability to fulfill the previously promised valid concerns of the students led to another round of suspension of classes and oppression of the crusaders protesting in the DSJ campus.

Inspired by the Kisan Mukti March, this march saw students from all over the country marching from the Red Fort to Parliament Street on the 7th of February.

Barely a fortnight after YIAM, students, teachers and unions marched in solidarity from Mandi house to Parliament Street to protect public higher funded education. The march was led by Delhi University Teachers’ Union (DUTA) along with various other organisations.

On 14 February, massive protests erupted in an attempt to disrupt, if not stop, the annual ‘Virgin Tree pooja’ tradition of Hindu College. Members of Pinjra Tod, SFI and Hindu College Progressive Front jointly protested and clashed against supporters of the pooja, mainly students of the Boys’ Hostel. The protests, widely covered by the media, had led to a few scuffles.

Mass failures in the examinations for MSc Mathematics had rocked the department. They received their results on 8 February and had started protesting on 14 February. The protesters demanded to be shown copies of the answer sheets along with an independent investigation, among other things. Various other departments in addition to the Mathematics Department and organisations like AISA, SFI, KYS, and DSU joined the protests.

On the 23rd of February, protests broke out at the hostel gate of Daulat Ram College after mishaps at the college hostel and the rampant culture of hatred and sexism. The protesters demanded basic rights which were being violated by the DRC hostel board.  The fight continued on to the next day, the 24th, when residents marched from their hostel gate towards the Vice Chancellor’s office and staged a sit down.

The Delhi University Teachers’ Association had carried out sustained protests since the beginning of the year and even before that, against issues like the 13 point roster system, privatisation and the needs of ad-hoc teachers. Human chains, candlelight marches, ‘total strikes’ and a ‘Bharat Bandh’ were few of the measures adopted by the association and its supporters. The protests succeeded in bringing an ordinance by the government on 8 March to restore the old 200 point roster system.

Kartik Chauhan

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Prateek Pankaj

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