A bad memo sent at an inappropriate time is all it takes to release the pressure. Finally, on Thursday, students of National Law University Meghalaya walked out of their classrooms, initiating a peaceful protest that has almost paralysed the campus. It was a very small problem, virtually an aggressively inconsequential problem really: a brand new compulsory uniform policy imposed by a very high level. However, if you speak with any one who’s actually on the ground in Shillong today you soon discover that the uniform rule was the last straw. This entire fuss is centred on Vice-Chancellor Kerpa Meida and the administration that has “gone off the deep end” regarding student basic academic welfare, students say.
No one strikes all of the campus because of a dress code. They’re being crushed by the basic systems of education. They are having to cope with an extremely hectic trimester and have little room for breath and recovery at all, let alone from a fever. For months, there’s been a series of grievances. The lack of transparency, fairness in procedure, and the actual decision-making are massive and glaring. It’s not a university that is raising independent legal minds, but a high-school boarding house that’s trying to bully young adults into submission.
Mathematics that is easy to do but hard to believe in.
The academic policies must be examined to ascertain the extent of the frustration emanating from the students. The Bar Council of India has a rather uniform rule throughout the country. In order to write your papers you must attend 70 percent of the class. But NLU Meghalaya did not think that the baseline was too hard. They raised the maximum requirement to 75 per cent. The margins are very tight – a student who misses precisely half of the classes in a subject will not be allowed to take the final. It’s a rather hard system. In the last trimester, students were reportedly barred in 19 different subjects only for failing to meet the minimum number of students.
It gets worse. The administration even instituted a system of grades based on attendance. There are up to 10 marks for each subject that are wholly based on attendance. Those who achieve 95% correct will receive the maximum 10 markers. One if you just make it with 75%, two if you manage it with 50%. This allows for a situation when someone gets sick, they don’t just miss a lecture, they negatively impact their GPA. Being sick is a big issue, too because the university will not accept undocumented illnesses. Medical leave is very closely examined. Menstrual leave does not exist. The system doesn’t give a shit if you’re in pain. People either come or go, otherwise they lose points. Even compulsory wellbeing sessions are included in attendance – and that is just as ironic. You are put under pressure to relax, practically under threat of failing your studies.
A Confused Curriculum and Missing Internships.
Not only about the attendance, the course work seems to be in an utter chaos. The major-minor honours system is in use at the university, but no one appears to be quite sure how the fourth-year course is supposed to be structured. There are no clear guidelines, that is. You have hundreds of students paying exorbitant fees, a highly demanding trimester program, and they have no clear roadmap of their own degree. Evaluations are very inconsistent. In some of the higher papers, such as Constitutional Law and Reading the Law, assignments are said to be totally overlooked in the final grading procedure.
There’s professional development, too. The whole point of a 5 year law degree is to get practical experience. The administration has incorporated the internship as a two credit requirement. However, when students are successful in accessing these opportunities, the college stands in their way. It is a nightmare to obtain a No Objection Certificate for internship or to take part in a moot court competition. Students say that they are given an extremely limited amount of approval, which is frequently made difficult or postponed, and is clearly biased in favour of the specific candidate. They’re being asked to get out there and play, but it isn’t going to be funded by the institutions or the expense reimbursements. Currently, the teaching load is being carried by only seven assistant professors, with the assistance of a number of research fellows and LLM students. That’s a ridiculous proportion for a university with three separate courses.
The story of a hostel, a hilly commute and double standards.A hostel, a commute on the hills and double standards.
But the physical conditions that are prevalent in NLU, Meghalaya, are as rigorous as the studies. There is a shortage of hostel facilities in the university. There is a large portion of the Student Body who must live off campus. This means they are traveling all day to class each day, through extremely rugged, hilly land, in order to meet that draconian attendance rate of 75 percent.
If you’re a lucky girl who does actually have a room, you’re forced to live by 50’s rules. Outing is a very gendered policy. Male students may move in and out of school as they please during regular school hours. However, for female students, explicit email permission from parents is required even to leave the campus grounds. It is a highly discriminatory practice and total disregard of the concept of adult autonomy. Then there’s the fact that most of the student clubs and societies have been all but wiped out, with not much institutional support, and the food committee on the campus is completely paralysed when it comes to the cost of their food menus. The administration has even reduced the fee for the new domicile batch to approximately 1.5 lakhs per year and the older batches are paying a huge 3 lakhs. Financial inequality is leading to a lot of resentment.
Today, the most prominent symbol is a Brick Wall of Bureaucracy.
The whole response of the administration to this crisis has been abysmal. The university registrar finally sent out an email late in the evening after the strike began and pressure increased. This was the typical “administrative deflection. In response to over thirty specific detailed demands made by the students, the administration responded to only three of them.
They assured to release final mark sheets within 10 days of the announcement of results. They agreed to use the Safe Exam Browser next trimester for the anonymization of the students’ exam paper marking, citing reasons to do so due to the current use of a Learning Management System. And they suggested looking at law papers, from time to time. That was it. The email said that the massive structural problems such as attendance policy, gendered curfew, absence of faculty, major-minor confusion and the lack of transparency from Vice-Chancellor Kerpa Meida’s office were taken into account, and would be investigated. No timeline. No concrete process. No real promise to make any changes. Students: We are standing firm: the movement is peaceful. All they want is someone to stand opposite them and take responsibility for the mess. This cut presents on-site reporting, directly from the source on student grievances and the current tension between the students and the university over the attendance and uniform policy.
