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Nexus 2013: The Good and The Bad

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The three day cultural fest of Sri Venkateswara College, christened Nexus, was part of the last batch of fests in DU. Having had a bad run for the past few years except maybe last year, Venky faced the daunting task of restoring its image. Nexus kicked off on the 7th of this month with Member of Parliament, Mr. Shashi Tharoor gracing the inaugural ceremony as the Chief Guest. As he addressed the gathering, he reminisced about his time in college and spoke about how times had changed. The first day of the fest undoubtedly belonged to the talented actors of DU. The day saw the best of acting talent come forth onto the stage with not just the street play but also the theatre competition setting the tone for the day. Eventually, the Street Play competition saw SRCC grab the top prize, with Hansraj College and Hindu College standing second and third respectively. The theatre competition was a fresh break from the usual competitions held during such fests for the actors managed to effortlessly touch the hearts of their audience. The second day of the fest saw a wide variety of events ranging from choreography to debating to the crowd favourite, the Battle of the Bands. Members of the band The Barefaced Liars, which was set to perform later on during the day, judged the Battle of the Bands contest. However, the sound system was quite a dampner during the performances. With Pentagram set to perform on the last day, Venkites pinned their hopes on the last day to turn out better than the second. The morning of 9th March saw The Nizami Brothers put up a show in the Seminar Hall. After that performance, students waited impatiently for Pentagram to take the stage, which they did after a delay of almost three hours at around 7 in the evening. The crowd response after their show, however, was mixed. While some felt that they put up a great show, others were disappointed by the lack of Bollywood music. All in all, there seemed to be no show stealer at this fest. A lot could possibly be done to make it more interesting. The OC should probably jot that down for reference next year. Surya Rajappan [email protected] Image credits: Sonam Satija ]]>

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DU Marksheets go MIA

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They are calling it the case of the missing marksheets. Well, not quite literally. But certain administrative lapses in Delhi University and its colleges are surely jeopardizing some students’ prospects. These lapses involve marksheets, which still haven’t been received by enrolled students of the annual mode and re-evaluation results, both of which have dampened the future prospects of third year students in several colleges.

Take the case of Shanti Kapoor*, a History Honours student at a prominent college on campus. Her ordeal began with her second year result’s announcement, and continued until last week. Due to a discrepancy in her marks on the first marsheet she received, she was made to forfeit almost half of her third year.

She was disallowed to attend classes in the third year until she officially passed her second year, due to a re-evaluation result that refused to come out until mid-December. And even then, she was lucky to have found out through a friend who happened to chance upon a list on her college notice board. The authorities did not bother to inform her directly.
She says, “It was terrible. I was lucky that my friend saw my name on the list of re-evaluation results that were out. But that wasn’t the end; I had to complete so many more administrative formalities until I was finally granted re-admission. I had to waste more than half of my third year for no fault of my own, and the laxity of the University. I hope no one else is made to go through this.”

While hers is one of the exceptional tragic cases, an acute problem being faced by students since time immemorial is the late issuance of marksheets. While the results are declared by late July-early August, the marksheets come much later. This derails the aspirations of numerous students keen on applying for further studies abroad, as they don’t have the relevant academic credentials to demonstrate to universities for the process.

Says Vandana Sharma* of another well-known college, “We only received our marksheets for second year in December, by which time several deadlines were over. We had to get unofficial transcripts made from the college, and explain our plight to universities abroad. It was not pleasant.”
This issue seems to be another one of the several glitches that the University needs to fix before the start of the ambitious revamp of a 4-year degree next academic year onward.

*Names have been changed on request

Tanya Dua
[email protected]

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DU Students on hunger strike due to lack of hostels

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Hunger strikes seem to be a promising method to attract the attention of the authorities in India. Six students of University of Delhi went on an indefinite hunger strike on 23rd January, 2013. The strike was held to raise the demand for better accommodation for students outstation students complained of not having proper places to live in.

Students do find rooms outside the University in neighbouring areas, but the cost is not feasible for everyone. Many of them work part-time to arrange for the money. The monthly cost in these rooms comes to about Rs.5000 to Rs.7000, and that is excluding the cost for food. Including food, students pay anywhere between Rs.10,000 and Rs.15,000 monthly.

Students who are residents of Delhi also support the cause, saying that it is a basic necessity for students that come from outside Delhi. Girls complain that living in areas like Mukherjee Nagar and Vijay Nagar is a compromise on their safety. Out of around 1.8 lakh students, only 6,000 students are able to live in hostels. Questions have also arisen regarding the Students’ Union that it is not supporting and raising students’ issues, but is busy with its parties.

There is demand for healthy, nutritious and affordable food in the University. According to a senior DU official, the University has tied up with Indian Railways so that affordable food is available to the students in the canteens. There is also a demand for providing stipends to those students to whom the facility of hostels has not been provided.

About 400 signatures have been collected by the demand till now.

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Campus Central

Open Letter to the Vice Chancellor; University of Delhi on the Plight of Visually Impaired Students

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Respected Vice Chancellor Sir,

It was an honour to see the University inviting its students to witness the “Flag-in ceremony” to celebrate what was tagged the “Badhte Kadam IV” , in early December, supposedly aimed at spreading awareness regarding equal opportunity for the differently-able students or in the University’s own words “to highlight the social and cultural integration of people with disability”.

Hats off to the initiative and I pray that it meets its desired end.

Sir, with all due respect, I beg to say that to me this is sheer waste of time and energy. The University pompously speaks of an equal opportunity cell but the bitter truth is that the differently able students are being discriminated against in the university and also being denied what they are officially entitled too.

I understand that as per the norms of your Equal Opportunity Cell, all the differently abled students are to be strictly allotted classrooms in the ground floor by the colleges. Have you ever tried to find out how many colleges actually implement these directions? Has any college in your recent memory been issued a show-cause notice for their violation by your office? If not, then I would like to inform you that sadly the ones violating the directions are in majority.

The head of the Equal opportunity Cell has gone on record (as reported in The Hindu) to say that he has very little powers to see that the directions are actually taken seriously and implemented by the colleges. He agreed that every year such incidents are reported from various colleges. This in itself speaks volumes about the state of affairs in the University. Unless the cell is empowered to take strong actions, the intentions with which it was established (noble no doubt) will never be realized.

I have a classmate who is visually impaired and literally had to scrounge for a scribe during the first semester exams in spite of the fact that the University, through its Equal Opportunity Cell, proudly claims that it shall provide him (and the like) with one.  Had the University been concerned enough and been infatuated with its proclamations, he and many like him wouldn’t be searching for scribes for the semester exams with absolutely no help from the University or the colleges.

Under the University’s norms, all visually impaired students are to be provided with electronic reading devices by their respective colleges. Sir, the reality is that only a handful is provided with them. Most of them are subjected to procrastination by the staff.

Far from providing an environment of equality to them, the University, thanks to its many unscrupulous colleges, has rather aggravated their misery. Incidents where the writers brought in by the students were not allowed in the colleges were aptly reported in The Hindu after the semester exams in early December.  Instead, peons and people who can’t even read and write are being provided as writers to these students under the watchful eyes (I sincerely doubt if they are) of the staff of your great colleges.

Respected Sir, I by no stretch of imagination wish to doubt the University’s intention in this regard. All I want to highlight is that making rules and directions is one thing, while implementing them on ground is a different matter. Nothing great will be achieved by holding such ceremonies when the lethargic attitude of the staff continues to haunt the differently abled students.

These events shall remain nothing more than utopian fantasies if they are never to be realized, felt and implemented. I sincerely feel that instead of spreading awareness regarding the said matter, it is imperative that the University staff itself  be morally and psychologically counseled well enough by some experts though seminars and trainings. This will help to tackle the problem to a relatively greater degree and thus meet the desired end.

Thanking you in anticipation, and looking forward to a speedy and positive action from your side.

Sincerely Yours

 

Mukesh Rawat
BA(H) Pol Science
[email protected]

 

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Campus Central

Delhi University’s first NKN lecture series

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The National Innovation Council and the National Informatics Centre is all set to launch a public lecture series on the National Knowledge Network (NKN) from Wednesday, 23rd January. The NKN is a multi gigabyte pan-India network that makes it possible to facilitate virtual classrooms across the country. Apart from classrooms; libraries, grid computing applications and various university researches can also be made available on a wider platform. Currently, NKN has connected over 900 nodes in India with a bandwidth of 1Gbps/ 100mbps.

The lecture series will be webcasted live from the Conventional Hall at the University of Delhi, from 10AM to 11:30AM. This Live webcast of the lecture can be streamed from  www.webcast.gov.in/nkn. It will begin with an introduction by Professor Dinesh Singh; the Vice Chancellor of DU. The lecture on ‘Democratising Information, Justice, Equality and the Rule of Law’ will be delivered by Professor Michael Sandel, from Harvard University, and Sam Pitroda, Adviser to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovation. The webcast will connect about 500 institutes across India, making it the first university lecture to take place on such a grand scale. The lecture will be followed by an interactive session, where students can pose their questions to the panel. Questions can also be submitted via twitter.

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Campus Central

Over-Inflation of Marks

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For the first time in its history, the DU results were announced in record time of 15 days. But the impossible seems to have happened at the University of Delhi.

A student scored 102 marks in her French paper, which was, to her utter amazement, a paper having 100 marks as maximum. Soon, similar discrepancies surfaced in other colleges.

A second year BSc student is shown to have scored above maximum in both internal assessment as well as the written exam. He was given 65 out of 50 in Paper I and 74 out of 50 in Paper II. A student found he had scored 57 out of 55 in mathematics. Another has been given 58 marks out of 38 in physics. Marksheets are replete with such inconsistencies

Eleven students of Kalindi College have received two sets of their third semester exam results. In the second marksheets, six marks have been knocked off their total scores. As a result, a few failed. There are reports from other colleges of similar discrepancies in the results of the undergraduate semester exams conducted in November-December 2012.

“Much ink has been spilt on the woes of the Semesterization that was has been established in the University over the last two years. What we have seen is in fact a series of actions which have only compounded the mess,” quoted a second year student.

This faux pas is still not taken seriously by the varsity authorities. This matter was raised by one of the victims in VC’s “darbar” as she was denied admission in Law Faculty seeing the unrealistic marksheet, but no austere steps were taken in this regard.  The university’s examination system has lost its credibility pertaining to regular inconsistencies being witnessed every time semester results come out.
University authorities have repeatedly blamed the sheer  number of students, not only for such problems, but even for major reforms such as removal of provisions for special chance and re-evaluation.

University sources say such faults have become common since the introduction of the semester system, which practically doubles the work of the exam branch.
University authorities admit that given the large number of students involved, errors are possible. Mistakes can happen while dealing with the evaluation and declaration of 122 results for 1.30 lakh students. DU has opened a grievance redress window and is now rectifying the mistakes.

Evaluation of students is meant to test their understanding of the subject, their power of critical thinking and ability to assimilate the syllabus. This is to provide an honest benchmark for an outsider to gauge the student’s appropriateness for a job, for further academic work etc. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen when it is obvious to outsiders that the marks are not a reflection of the student’s abilities- either by themselves or in a comparative sense.

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Campus Central

The start of the Fest Season

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The second part of the Delhi University year is looked forward to, not just because of the relieving winter but the season of college fests that light up each campus in the city between January and March.

The societies gear up for all competitions in these months. Dancers can be seen practicing their complex turns and twists in their sleep, while the singers hidden in every college are heard humming random mash-ups. It’s a hectic season for every busy bee involved in any union, organizational body or society. It is an exciting time for everybody.

When asked about their expectations from the upcoming season, Drishti, a student of Hindu exclaimed, “More guest stars!” Another voice piped in, “Perhaps lesser Honey Singh?”

Most students are eagerly awaiting the lineup of star performances that highlight most college fests. Last year saw celebrities like Kailash Kher, RDB, Honey Singh and Them Clones taking the stage at various colleges. The competitions that most audiences tend to look forward to yielded expected responses of choreography, battle of the bands and dramatics.

It was a nice surprise to see niche concepts and ideas like focused discussions and literary events also pop up among the responses. Some of the interviewees were more straightforward. “We’re looking forward to the food,” said Tarun from KMC, referring to the immense number of stalls and shops that populate all college grounds from the most surprising of places to the most well known.

The first fest on the DU calendar this year is GargiCollege’s Reverie from the 29th to 31st January which is promising to be even larger this year. Our editors and photographers will cover the succeeding season in exceeding detail.

Keep watching this space for the same!

 

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Bazinga

Bazinga

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It’s been an interesting week at the South Campus of Delhi University. An upcoming large-scale conference has placed the authorities with a logistical problem. With the event reported to attract an unusually large number of scholars, students, and other flora and fauna. The trouble however is that as a large part of the campus is under green cover and a major number of the people attending the conference have stated they feel queasy around places that could be harbouring animals and birds in it, the authorities have now sought help from the students.

Starting Monday, students of the University are invited to help the officials out in clearing  away some of the plant cover as the budget of the conference is not as much as would be needed to accommodate the expense that might be incurred to engage professional help for the matter.

One of the students interested in this drive has said that he views this as an opportunity to increase his bodily strength and also maybe become poetic, what with the interaction with nature this opportunity gives him.

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Campus Central

Interview with Arnav Das-CAT 2013

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We earnestly extend hearty congratulations to you on your resounding performance and a thunderous applause to your hard work that has paid off. In order for us to share your success story, please respond to the following questions.

Q. Please give us some information regarding your academic background, hobbies and anything more about yourself that you would like to share.

I am a student of St. Stephen’s College, pursuing Mathematics Honours. I have pursued Science stream in class 12 from DPS RKP and class 10 from St. James’ Calcutta.
My hobbies include web-designing and travelling. Also I am an integral part of debating society in college (winner SRCC’s Gambit 2010), placement cell and Finance and Investment Cell (VP) in college.

Q. Sometimes reality exceeds dreams and vision too. Was your scorecard a similar situation or was it close to your expectations?

CAT – 99.60 (Quant-96.63, Verbal-99.77)
I was always expecting a good score in verbal but was apprehensive of the quant results as my paper had not gone too well. Final results in each section were slightly higher than my expectations but I certainly did not expect the overall to be skewed the way it was towards my verbal score!

Q. What was your mantra for preparation for this extremely competitive exam and how long have you been preparing for it? Did you bind yourself to a rigorous schedule?

I had been preparing for 6 months and not very rigorous. I made sure that I was relaxed (followed 6 TV shows regularly online) and not neglecting my other interests such as college societies. I did not even take the day before my CAT off (was in college helping prepare for an event we organized).

The simple mantra for success is to not get caught up in the nitty-gritty of the material (mugging formulae of grammar rules) but instead to get a broader idea of the subject. This will enable you to solve questions in CAT that you have never seen before.

Q. What level of proficiency is required for each section of the paper and how do you suggest it can be achieved?

Verbal, I believe, is a section that can be perfected with intense reading of fiction (and maybe non-fiction) literature. No amount of ‘studying’ or ‘practicing’ shall help.

In quant, try to gain exposure of various kinds of questions by practicing from books of various coaching institutes. Also, try to do as many questions as possible conceptually, without pen-paper and without using formulae!

Q .Where all have you secured admission and what criteria are you going to follow to narrow down on your institute for admission?

I have secured admission to ISB through YLP. Hence I have not applied beyond IIMs. Will select A/B/C over ISB, or else stick to ISB.

Q. What is your ultimate aim and what is going to be the next rung in your ladder of success?

Ultimate aim is to be happy and content. Reasonable money in an exciting and challenging job environment would be an ideal end! I might even opt for a start-up in the long run!

Q. How important is formal coaching to crack CAT? What advice do you want to give to the future aspirants?

Coaching becomes essential to acquaint yourself with the format of the paper and certain tips and tricks. It also helps to benchmark against other likeminded people. For me, it was essential in ensuring that I was in touch with my CAT syllabus all through!

Thank you for your time and effort!

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Features

A Dialogue With The Dalai Lama

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Tomorrow, 14th January 2013 Delhi University and the Mind and Life Institute has organised a dialogue with His Holiness, The Dalai Lama to discuss Science, Ethics and Education. Apart from Dalai Lama, Professor Dinesh Singh: Vice Chancellor of University of Delhi, Arthur Zojonc: President of Mind and Life Institute, Richard J. Davidson: Professor of Psychology Wisconsin-Madison University, ThuptenJinpa:  Scholar neuroscience studies, Stanford University, Tania Singer:  Director Mask Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and brain sciences will also be present to talk about these topics.

The venue has been fixed at Convention Hall, Vice-regal lodge, University of Delhi and the first round starts from 9 am to 12:30 am and the second from 1:30pm to 4:30 pm. To participate in the event, the interested Delhi University Student has to send a write up of 100 words on why he/she wants to be a part of the discussion. We can say that it is a once in a life time opportunity to see and hear his holiness talk about the topic which so closely relates to us.

 

Aishwarya Chaurasia
[email protected] 

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