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Sameeksha, the Hindi Debating Society of Gargi College organised two events on 5th February, as a part of the college’s Annual Fest – Reverie 2014. While the first event was a Hindi Extempore Competition, the second was a Hindi Debate Competition.

The event saw participation from almost 16 students. They were each given 1 minute to think and 2 minutes to speak.
Some of the topics for the event were ‘loo tantra, bheed tantra mein badal rha hai’, ‘kya kavi keval kalpana mein hi keen hai’ and  ‘urbanization and reduction of villages’.

Aseem Aggarwal from Hindu college bagged the top position. Mohit from the Faculty of Law and Tajwar from Gargi college went away with the second and third prizes respectively.

The event was judged by Mr. Upendra, Editor of Samwad. He was accompanied by Ajay Kumar, member of the psychology department of Gargi college and Zola Kisha Adhikari.

For the debate competition, a total of 7 teams spoke on the topic – ‘Videshon mein bhartiya pratibha palayan – Majboori ya mahatvkanksha’ (English translation: Brain drain in India – Helplessness or aspiration)

The debate was judged by Dr. Viresh Raj Sharma, a Ph.D from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Krishna Meena, an Assistant Professor at Gargi College.

At the end of the debating sessions, Deepanshi from Gargi College won the first prize. Mohit from Faculty of Law bagged the second prize in this event as well while Vikas from Sri Venkateswara College attained the third spot.

Catch live updates from Reverie 2014 here | Visit the Reverie 2014 Facebook Album here

As part of Reverie 2014, Samranjini, The Indian Music Society of Gargi College organised the Indian Music (Duet) competition in the Seminar Hall. A total of 13 teams from the Delhi University and other universities outside DU participated in the competition.

The judges for the event were Dr. Neepa Choudhary, Arunadhati Bhattacharya- disciple of Padmashri Vidushi Sumitra and Deepika Chatterjee- the Teacher Convenor of Samaranjini. The time limit given to the teams for their performance was 5 minutes and the criterion for judgement being on the basis of Rhythm, Notes, Overall Performance and Coordination.

Alankar
Alankar from Hindu College performs Raaj Jaunpuri

The prize money for the competition was Rs. 3000, 1500 and 1000 for the 1st, 2nd and the 3rd positions, respectively. The 1st prize was bagged by Rahul and Kshitij from Sadhna Sangeet College (SSC). The second prize went to Kshitij, Saptak and Prateek from Hans Raj College and the third was a tie between Miranda House and Jesus & Mary College. Rahul from SCC said, “The competition was great event to be a part of. The level of competition helped us learn a lot.”

The event was followed by the Indian Classical Solo Competition with a total of nine teams participating in the event. The first position in the same was bagged by Faculty of Music, while the second position was a tie between Hindu College and Kirorimal College. Hansraj College took the third spot in the competition.

With inputs from Tushar Diwan

Catch live updates from Reverie 2014 here | Visit the Reverie 2014 Facebook Album here

Oracle is the newsletter of Gargi College with a coverage of a widespread array of topics including economics, politics, entertainment, opinions, creative prose, poems and reviews of food, movie, books and current affairs.

The idea was born out of the minds of a group of students from English Honors in 2001. The names of founding members- editorial board names- Kakul, Namita, Bhavana, Aarathi, Neharika, Priyanka and Anandana Kapur. Now, the founding members have gone on to become journalists, teachers of literature, film makers and lawyers.

“The college – under Dr Hema Raghavan – had an open door, student oriented approach. We felt we needed a forum to express our ideas, build dialogue within and across the college and that our backgrounds in art and literature would equip us to shape and present popular opinion”, says Anandana, one of the founder members who is now a documentary film maker now.

Oracle has a vision-“to have a space for expression and articulation through words and images, to be a graffiti board, a space for debates and even creative outpourings of anonymous writers!” Earlier it also invited readers to send in open letters, draw caricatures and that is how it was to make a space for critical engagement as well as a site for popular ideas.

On being asked what gave Oracle its name, Anandana said, “Oracle was a tipping of the hat to our major – English literature. It was also a play on the ability of the oracle to be prescient, to be a medium to connect beyond (with the student body and teacher) predict the future (in this case trend) and reveal what lies within (creatively and intellectually). We also created an opinion box when Neharika and I became editors. Soon, oracle became a very sought after medium and inspired other discipline led newsletters. You can say, we started the fire! ”

The editorial team of consists of 11 members from Commerce, Science and Humanities including of the Editor, Arunima Sodhani, the Sub-Editor, Drishti Rongpipi and 9 columnists. There are three issues published per semester. The columnists are selected on the basis of the on-the-spot article that has to be written from 3-5 topics given for choice.

Twisha, a student from Gargi College said “The college newsletter provides us information from almost all backgrounds be it current affairs to entertainment and what not, it is a really nice platform and initiative that our college has.”

With funding that is allocated by the college annually and a variety of themes in purview, Gargi college’s newsletter is an interesting portal for the college’s students to explore.

With inputs from Sonakshi Agarwal

gargi-jmc
Unlike other Delhi University colleges that kept their first cut-off high in order to avoid over admissions, Gargi College had its cut-off for Economics at 93%, while the average cut-off for Economics was fixed at 97%.  Gargi, which previously offered BBE (Bachelor in Business Economics) as a course, is offering Economics Honours as a discipline for the first time. The college was over flooded with students aspiring admission for the course. There was shortage of forms and students were provided with tokens instead. It had an intake which was approximately five times more than the sanctioned strength.

While many colleges are still admitting students, there are some colleges that closed admissions after the first cut-off. Gargi also put a stop to its intake process for almost all courses except History, Sanskrit, Botany and Mathematics. Economics is available in 42 colleges in the campus and most of them came out with a second cut-out. Gargi however, closed admissions just after the first cut-off admitting over 200 students against the approved intake of 40 students.

“According to the University policy and guidelines, its not the first come first serve basis for admissions, no one can deny admissions if a student is eligible for a course provided he/she comes within the time specified”, a lecturer from the college said. “When there are over admissions for a course, we increase the number of sections for the same so that the students and the lecturers do not face problems at the end.” the lecturer added.

Generally, at the most departments have two sections in a batch. With such a huge number, the batch might now be divided in to something around four to five sections. Space crunch, limited faculty and overall limited resources are some of the problems that such a situation could result in. When questioned with regard to the same, we got the response that the college is fully equipped to handle the situation and no college would take admissions otherwise.

(Check entire Admissions 2013 coverage here)

Jesus and Mary College reportedly had their own admission fiasco going on. On 3rd July hundreds of students turned up at JMC to try their luck at getting admitted even though they did not satisfy the cut off. Apparently lots of girls withdrew their admission from JMC’s economics course after the second cut off as they qualified for other courses. So JMC offered the jackpot, admission on first come first serve basis however it was not a formal announcement. Indecently more than a few people heard about it and there was a huge admission rush on the 3rd.

“I had called the office yesterday and they confirmed the rumour. But today they did not admit anyone below 95% because of the large number of students scored 95%.”said a disappointed DU aspirant, Varsha. Even though the official cut off declared was 96.5%, students were admitted at 95%.

Colleges are confused and unable to handle the number of aspirants. Some are overloaded while others are adopting under the table method to admit students. The Delhi University admission procedure certainly requires further improvement. Have something to add about the admission mess around? Share it with us in the comments.

Reported by: Shaily Sharma ([email protected]) and Pinakita Gupta ([email protected])

Everybody has read Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in their childhood and all of us know about the seductive but murderous Count Dracula. All of us have also seen movies in which aliens invade the earth or aliens save the day. In short, Fantasy, which summarizes it all, was the theme of Gargi’s literary festival, Literati 2013, which was held on February 15. Since the theme itself was so versatile (including fairytales, science fiction, the gothic, romantic fantasy) the discussions initiated at the festival were equally diverse. One of the panel speakers Dr.Anuradha Ghosh discussed fairytales and folktales, how the word ‘fantastic’ carries different connotations in relation with the two and the connection between folktales and literature. Dr. Christel Devadawson, another speaker, drew our attention to ‘Portraiture’ in relation to Lewis Carroll’s Alice books. This mapped a discussion on Sir John Tenniel, the renowned caricaturist in Victorian England, as the illustrator of the Alice books and the politics of Victorian domesticity. The third speaker, Dr. Debjani Sengupta talked about the origin of science fiction after World War I. This was followed by a specific discussion on Indian science fiction, particularly Bengali science fiction where she discussed Leela Majumdar’s story Stairs. As the discussions ended we were forced to ask ourselves- “What is the real?” and “Who dreamed it?” Now “this is a serious question….” With such illuminating and thought provoking discussions, the day had just begun. What followed were Student paper presentations. The theme, being so interesting, the papers presented were all the more captivating. The topics ranged from the sexist representation of Wonder woman in the comic books and stereotypes of men in fairytales to a comparison of the Grimm brothers’ fairytales with the Walt Disney version. One of the papers tried to bring out the fantasy in Manto’s realistic short stories revolving around the world of a partitioned India which was really worth applauding. Spin a Yarn was the next activity which required the participants to weave a story around a sentence provided to them on the spot. It proved to be one of the most hilarious and interesting of all activities. Participants invented stories in which they fainted after smelling the fragrance of fresh fruits and one of them woke up to be a boy when paradoxically he was actually a boy. These generated fits of laughter among the judges, teachers and students. The activity really did give wings to the weirdest of our imagination! Twist the Plot was next on the line where the students were given the beginnings of two popular stories, Cinderella and Harry Potter, only to give the story and their genres a new twist. Book-Jacket designing was also organized to serve the creative instincts of the students. Cherry on the cake, this year’s Treasure Hunt surprised the students with its witty clues which tested both their general knowledge and presence of mind. “This year’s Literati will be the most memorable fest with its ‘fantastic’ ride” remarked a final year student of the college. The carnival ended on a high note where everybody had thoroughly enjoyed themselves and had explored their imagination to the fullest. After all what is the world but our imaginative invention? And the winners were: Paper Presentation     :       Anuj Gupta Spin-a-yarn                :       Chhavi, Nandita and Anuj Book-jacket design    :       Harshita Twist-the-plot           :       Anuj Gupta Treasure Hunt            :       Nidhi, Khushbu and Poorva

Shweta Sharma and Akshita Luthra

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