By Sahib Singh, 8 Aug : Well if you were in college a decade ago, you surely would have felt a twitchy feeling in your belly before you set your first steps in an entire new world. There may have been exhilaration within because from that day forth a new experience awaited you; probably the most cherished one of your lives,’ THE COLLEGE DAYS’. But what ran parallel with this buzz was a feeling of disquiet out of the fear of being RAGGED. You may have had umpteen reasons to feel insecure and may even have found your heartbeat reaching alarming levels each time you saw a gang of seniors approaching you from the other side. You felt going topsy-turvy and all muddled up because you knew that you had entered a locus where it is was impossible to turn around and run away. All you could have done was, pray that the gang approaching you is not the most notorious lot of the college.
But hang on, the times have changed now. The tables have turned and if you are a fresher you got all the face cards to play with. Professor ML Gupta, Dean Students Welfare at PEC University Of Technology shared with us that the institution deals with the Ragging Problem very seriously and all measures had been taken to make the institution Ragging Free. The college strictly follows the UGC Guidelines and stringent actions are taken against those found culpable. He also embellished the fact by stating that so far no complaint has been registered. Though he illustrates that the College is more than willing to support constructive and healthy interaction between the students so that there remains no communication gap between the freshers and the seniors. The Dean tells us that the college has copious clubs and societies which act as avenues of interface between the students. He says,” this is how we make it healthy and constructive”. In an interactive session with the first year students of PEC University of Technology we found out that the students had absolutely no trepidation amongst them out of the fear of ragging. Mehak from first year Electronics says,” Though I was apprehensive on the first day, but all my fears vaporized on the first day itself when I observed that the only thing the seniors did was, ‘Smile’ as if they were welcoming us to a new family with all humility”.
Though this is the case a PECUT, we hope that all Indian institutions have conditions coherent with it, so that the students who have gone through many travails and enter college with a new zeal and vigor don’t become victims of the trauma of hostile ragging and sink into depression.