After the long, drawn out summer, the new session began with colleges ensuring newcomers don’t have any unpleasant experiences with their seniors. Delhi University has taken a host of anti-ragging measures like deploying flying squads, women police officers, CCTVs, installing complaint boxes and ragging helplines among others. The first few days saw jeeps full of serious policemen/women patrolling around colleges to keep an eye on the activities in and around campus.
The HRD ministry has also shown support to help tackle ragging. Freshmen looking for help can call 1800-180-5522 or e-mail at [email protected].
About 54,000 students have joined DU this year. Proctor of DU, Professor Gurmeet Singh, has personally written to college principals to check ragging. To the university’s credit, no serious ragging has been reported yet, and colleges are taking all steps possible to keep a tab on the students’ behaviour.
However, this did not deter some colleges from making their freshers feel welcome and they did not mind playing by the rules. Miranda house gave its freshers a traditional welcome. This also attracted attention from other colleges and consequently led to quite a crowd at its gates.
“A senior asked me to climb up the tree and sing ‘Vande Mataram.”, recalls Joe Hercher from his first year in Khalsa College. This is one of the various examples of ragging which took place in the university till some time ago. However, the number of such cases has drastically come down since the new laws came into effect.
It is a matter of debate whether this decline in ragging is received by the freshers with relief since a fraction of new students have protested against the ban altogether. However, the new session has largely set off with a promising and incident-free start.