The students of the School of Open learning held a protest at the Faculty of Arts, North Campus on January 22. One of the major grievances of the students was the delay in the declaration of results. Students say that the number of people enrolled in SOL is very high and the current infrastructure isn’t enough to support it; the University is very lax in all its procedures. Moreover, since there was a delay in the release of results, many students could not fill up their forms for their post graduate degree on time.
Another grievance that the students want addressed is that there is always a disparity between correspondence students and regular students, with the former being neglected. They think kind of it as an “Education Apartheid” that most people perceive students of SOL as those who do not take studies seriously and thus are only interested in part time studying. Moreover, according to SOL students, they are very much neglected by the University, as they have only one class every week, which does not help them study in any way. The students believe that the correspondence students outnumber the regular students and so there is a need to open more colleges. There has been no new college under the aegis of Delhi University since the past thirty years.
They demand that the infrastructure to accommodate more students and organize more lectures for students should be immediately developed and 80 new colleges be set up so that regular evening classes can take place and students get access to study material. In response to the protests a senior official said an immediate meeting with the VC will be called.
