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Things to Keep in Mind Before Taking Admission in DU

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Dear Aspiring Students,

Here is a list of things I feel you should keep in mind before taking admission into the University of Delhi (DU).

  • ADMISSION PROCESS

The admission process for DU seems tiring, laborious, and everlasting. Trust me, it is. After carefully filling in the forms, wait and have the patience for the cut-offs to come out. Keep in mind your favorable course and calculate the Best of Four (BoF) percentage accordingly. Keep all your documents ready and extra photocopies as well. Upload all essential documents on your Email ID’s and Google Drive for it to be easily accessible in case you forget something. Keep extra passport size photos and Aadhar-card copies of your parents and yourself. Read the UG Bulletin of information available on the website and check if you are applicable for any of the quotas. Keep dates in check (I had marked my calendars), stay in touch with your friends and peers, help each other and support each other.

(Read the DU UG Bulletin 2019-20 here: Click) 

  • EXPLORE

Going for admission procedure to colleges once the cut-offs come out takes time. It might take you a whole day, in the Dilli ki Garmi to get your admission done, and you might have to do this more than once, after subsequent cut-offs come out and you upgrade to different courses and colleges (I did it thrice). You might get tired, but don’t sit in one corner waiting, scared and anxious. The college you go and visit will most probably end up being your home for the next three years. So, explore the canteens, the gardens, the classrooms, the staircases, the markets nearby, the metro stations and bus stands. Familiarise yourself with the environment. It helps in the long run. Take a good company with you, take friends and family, take loads of food and make a picnic out of your admission visit. Make it as fun as you can, as it will be your first experience of being inside the college you will call your own for the next three years.

  • COURSE VS COLLEGE

Many of us don’t score high enough to get our favourite courses and colleges. So, once the cut-off comes out, it becomes a hysterical decision, to chose which course to pursue, and from which college. It will end up in a series of heated discussions between you, your family members, and your well-wishers, and constant visits to websites like collegedunia to read about the ‘scope’ of different courses. Your father will suggest one course, your mother will suggest another college, while you will be at the center of this dilemma, choosing your career just after finishing off with boards (I felt like taking a year-long vacation to decide my college). But in the midst of all this, keep in mind that while making this choice, you might end up losing your preferred course or college or even both, but in the end it won’t matter because once in college, you can helm the journey of your college years to follow the awaited dream you had. You can take your preferred course as an elective and earn a minor degree and participate in different colleges all over the DU circuit to make friends in your favourite college. Although, this decision should be taken with the utmost care, but in the end, you will never regret giving up on one particular thing, because the college life will reward you with so many others that you will be filled up to the brim with happiness and satisfaction.

  • LIFE AT DU

The life at the University is not what you might be envisioning right now, it is not all fun and games, but it is so much more. It is exposure and experience, new friends and families, perspectives and politics, fests and euphoria, academics and attendance, and crowds and metro. It is the flavour of chai that burns at your tongue, and sleepless nights you pull off to finish that one academic paper. It is commuting in an empty metro early in the morning to reach your college on time for an extra class, for it to get cancelled. It is crying, curled up in your bed missing your families, small events and birthday celebrations back home. It is managing the month end with minimal finances asking for udhaar because you are broke. It is also listening to your favourite songs non-stop in the long metro rides, reading your favourite authors or academic papers, it is also celebrating the small festivals you miss back home with your newfound family at college, it is also the breath of relief when you see your parents face to face on a skype call and it is also filling your tummy up with freshly-made Maggi on days you don’t like the PG food. It is a rollercoaster of freshness and it is going to be a beautiful journey!

All the best, students! Make a good choice without any regrets, and enjoy this time to the fullest, you will surely miss it once it is over.

Regards,

Sakshi Arora

 

Feature Image Credits: Saubhagya Saxena for DU Beat

 

Sakshi Arora

s[email protected]

 

 

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Campus Central

Home at Last

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What is it like to be half at home, hoping to hault time in the comfort of your town? Vacationing in the hometown is a bittersweet journey of learning and appreciating. Read on to find out why.

Gaius Plinius Secundus was a Roman philosopher who said, over two thousand years ago, “Home is where the heart is.” The twenty-first century is a time of wanderlust, throwbacks to holiday destinations, Kierkegaard’s much feared aesthetic sphere of existence over social media, and a home strewn everywhere but where the heart remains.

The outstation students- smoking in the allies near Symbiosis (Pune), or sitting in protests in the campuses at DU (University of Delhi), or shooting pictures for assignments at NIFT- share this longing for the hometown. So, when the semester ends, December arrives with chilled breezes and cocoa cups in the comfort of home. To go back home is no longer an end to the party, but it is the calm of returning to familiarity after a long day out in the streets of the world.

As a child, one awaited the two months of frolicking away from the hometown, maybe in the garden of grandparents’ place. One felt the joy in climbing up bunkers in trains for journeys that lasted the night to seek a place out of the home, for a vacation. As teenagers in school, Dil Chahta Hai and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobaara were the dream-worlds to aspire for. Sharing the hopes of road trips to Ladakh, making jokes about unfulfilled Goa plans, the time to finally leave hometowns knocked quietly. Vacations at home now become a luxury.

When living with a fixed set of people during the time of peculiar growth and evolution in your desires, friction is bound to exist. Generation gaps, value clashes, adolescent mood-swings, and a sense of distance while living in the same place, day in and day out, are the gist of the drama in an average Indian family. But vacationing in the home thaws the hardened egos on all sides, because it is not a given that one would be around forever to resolve the long-drawn differences. Presence, for a fortunate change, are not taken for granted anymore. Living out of a half-unpacked suitcase, though, remains an unfettered reminder of the vacation that is now home.

Image Courtesy: The New York Times

Image Caption: One looks at the familiar places with a softer lens, mostly grateful for having somewhere to always feel familiar at.

Anushree Joshi

[email protected]

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DUB Speak

A take on Safety in North Campus

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In light of recent events, safety in North Campus has been proven fragile. But even the failure in this test has not incentivized the necessary authoritative action.

 

Delhi University’s North Campus is famously known for its prestigious colleges. Some of the best colleges in the country are all smattered in close vicinity to each other. But in recent months, the same area has come to be known for its increasing crime rates.

 

On 2nd December, a tragic incident happened in the campus at nightfall. The incident started doing rounds on social media in a couple of days, to the utter disbelief and outrage of all students and residents of North Campus alike.

In the Facebook post, shared by multiple people, the following message was broadcasted:
“With utmost shock and anger, we inform you that our dear friend, Sandipan, a PhD student of Delhi School of Economics, was attacked by a couple of phone snatchers with knife late night on 2nd December. He was stabbed multiple times and is now admitted at Hindu Rao Hospital. The incident happened on the Naala bridge at Patel Chest. This is just opposite the Maurice Nagar Police Station.”
Pointedly, the area in question is a frequently visited place by all students in North Campus. A huge number of students reside around the area and so, the famous food outlets of North Campus are accessed via the same road. However, the incident raises questions on the presumed comforts and safety of the area, that the students expect before they take up expensive lodgings there.

 

The post continued, “Despite giving the number of the bike to the police, no action has yet been taken. The incident and the police inaction is telling of how dangerous our own campus has become.”

 

Multiple cases of phones being snatched have been reported by students. Within the first week of the commencement of college, a student of Hindu College lost her phone to the self-same phone-snatchers. Another student of Hindu College, on her way back from Vishwavidyalaya Metro Station to her PG in Shakti Nagar said, “I was sitting in a rickshaw with three other friends. The rickshaw came to a halt in front of Daulat Ram College where two men on a bike rushed past us and took away my phone.” The incident was traumatic for her to recount later.

 

As reported by DU Beat earlier, Aashish Jain, a student of Kirori Mal College (KMC) recalled the incident when his mobile phone was snatched. “I was right outside the college gate when I was on a call,” he said, adding that he hadn’t realised that people on motorbikes were keeping a watchful eye on him. “I disconnected the call, and was going to put the phone in my pocket when one of them snatched it from my hand and ran off on their motorbike.”

 

Unfortunately, safety is not a concern because of these material losses alone. Safety of girls is as always only an agenda in the pompous manifestos of all political parties. A student recalled being stalked by a group of men in their car when she was returning from her college one evening. Such stories are far from uncommon. It is sad that we should demand for gender-specific safety in such an eminent area.

 

Casual sexism and misogyny that all of us observe everyday go on to show that legal action in seclusion cannot ensure safety of women. We need a more ‘human’ approach towards the issue. Calling out such abominable behaviour is our resistance. It is ironic how an area that is marked for its institutions and their excellence, should be called out for its degrading safety measures.
“Delhi Police must immediately book the perpetrators,” notes the same Facebook post (aforementioned). “DU administration and the Delhi Police must ensure safety of students around the campus and around every college of DU.”
The inaction of the authorities can easily be explained in their inability to apprehend the perpetrators as yet. It is high time that proper action is taken. The ignorance towards these seemingly petty crimes may prove more harmful otherwise.

 

Feature Image Credits: Dailymail

 

 

Kartik Chauhan

[email protected]

 

 

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Campus Central

Shrouded in Uncertainty and Doubt: A Narrative of Transgender Students in DU’s Girls’ Colleges

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How should institutions founded on the notion that female-only spaces are vital, respond to and incorporate transgender students? 

Sehba (name changed on request) joined a girls’ college affiliated to the University of Delhi (DU) in the academic year 2016- 17. Born as a female, he never identified with the gender he was assigned at birth. He underwent a gender affirming surgery when he was in his second year of college. While he has had to struggle with the transition and guarded acceptance from his family, the college administration has made matters worse by threatening to cancel his admission. Four months into the gender affirming surgery, the status of his admission and continuance in the college is shrouded in doubt and uncertainty.

The questions revolving around this issue have wider connotations which have confounded admission officials at women’s colleges of DU in recent years. Should transgender women be allowed to apply? If so, how far into the gender transition process must an applicant be to be recognised as a woman? The transgender rights movement has now gained visibility, thereby challenging the existing institution of single-sex education in India, which has always been a largely heteronormative space.

Just how many transgender students, if any, are attending women’s colleges in DU remains unknown. Many colleges won’t disclose such information citing privacy concerns. Notwithstanding this, there has been a rise in the presence of transgender students in girls’ colleges across the country. With this increased visibility comes backlash that materialises in harassment against trans students.

When asked about the steps taken, if any, by college managements to prevent harassment of transgender students in girls’ colleges, Professor Arunima Roy, said, “We as an institution do whatever is in our capacity to provide counseling to the concerned students and figure out a suitable arrangement for them. However, the situation becomes tricky since the varsity has not issued specific guidelines regarding the admittance of transgender students in girls’ colleges.”

When DU Beat asked a graduate from Miranda House, Harshita Gujral, whether trans students should be allowed in a girls’ college or not, she responded in the affirmative and said, “Trans people are equally deserving of the kind of rights-centred environment that women’s colleges provide.” However, another graduate from the same college, Panchi Kalra, said, “Giving such status to trans people in women’s colleges would ultimately undermine the institutional mission to empower women.”

Women’s colleges of DU have long offered women a sanctuary from certain aspects of discrimination they face in the wider world. Now, these colleges have to decide whether or not to broaden their horizons of feminism, after all, intersectionality is everything.

Feature Image Credits: DU Beat

Vaibhavi Sharma Pathak
[email protected]

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