----------------------------------------------------------------------- Documented by Goa Desc Documentation Service & circulated by Goa Civic & Consumer Action Network (GOA CAN)<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Ph:2252660 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------- Criminal Activities In Our Colleges -------------------------------------------- A wave of criminal activity in the name of education has been sweeping our colleges. Now, it has become a universal phenomenon in almost all our educational institutions, varying in degrees, from moderate to brutal and vulgar forms. In this process, several victims have either committed suicide or have been physically crippled for life.
In the history of college education, several victims of sexual harrassment and ragging etc. have left the institution in sheer disgust and humiliation.
Passions unleashed by the anti-Mandal Commission agitation is still smouldering. It has a dangerous potential underlining the need to control any kind of activity, including rapes, gang-rapes, which might ignite a dangerous conflagration, if criminals and other elements use sexual harassment as means to oust the students from much sought after places of learning.
The probing of campus rape or gang-rape is too demeaning, and dangerous for even the sinners to ignore. It shatters the lives of the victims and their families, destroys the reputation of otherwise admirable educational institution, and campus administrators, and the general society as well.
Now, alarmed at the growing incidences of sexual harassment of female students, and ragging etc in Goa, it is high time that the government officials should enact the harshest punishment to the offenders from the colleges including the principal and the staff concerned. It would be a salutary message for all concerned, if it were made clear that the students, irrespective of sex, are also subject to the law, to its protection, as well as to the penalties for infringement, since we have the adequate penal provisions to deal with the menace, effectively.
The centres of education should have a quite and dignified atmosphere to generate the proper spirit of study and learning. But, in fact, they are ailing today for various reasons, .and one of them is certainly the antisocial activities.
One of the worst form of malady in the college campus is ragging. It has assumed a vulgar and barbaric form, in which freshers, both boys and girls are subjected to inhuman and morally depraved treatment, such as sexual molestation,physical torture, etc. In this process, many have lost their lives.
We have today so many colleges in Goa, but, not all of them are in the grip of brutal and vulgar activities. Only a few of them are involved, where the campus administrators are weak and supporting or conniving in it. Or else it has the support of the concerned students' unions.
Till date, many of the colleges in Goa do not have any rules or regulations against the antisocial activities, and where they do exist they are not enforced firmly.
In this case, every campus administration must ensure the safety and security of boys and girls left in their custody. It is the responsibility of the campus administration to provide protective rings around the weak students and students found guilty must be given exemplary punishment. In serious cases,there should be no hesitation to prosecute the offenders criminally,since we have adequate provisions for prosecution of the guilty.
Any laxity on the part of the campus authorities encourages the wayward senior students to indulge in criminal activities. All such offences in the college premises should immediately be reported to the police for investigation.
Today, the discipline in the colleges in Goa has been declining sharply due to mushrooming of the sub-standard colleges, indiscriminate admissions and sub-standard education and examinations.
A growing number of the unteachable professional students who having failed in exams,take upon themselves the role of the student leadership, and politics on the campus, in which the teachers and the students are all involved. The teaching profession is full of people for whom it is a trade, a vantage point from where to operate in different non-educational directions, rather than a vocation.
Ethical values and moral behaviour are imbibed by children in the formative years of their life.The laxity in the parental control at home, plus the movies, TV, and widespread circulation of pornographic literature have all contributed to the delinquency of the juveniles, and the close rapport between the parents and their children does not exist at all.
By the way, most of the problems at the college level today are of criminal types. Such problems should be tackled jointly by the parents, campus authorities, saner elements among the students, politicians, police, health authorities, government, student unions and lastly the press.
But in this matter, where do we stand? First of all, unfortunately, the parents themselves are most negligent and self-seeking. The campus authorities and the student unions are together hand in glove with the antisocial elements. Then, there are no more any saner elements among the students, and even if there are any left, then, they themselves are the abettors in crime.
This fact can be observed, when none of them come forward to cooperate with the investigators. Politicians are shielding the culprits. Government is trying to gain a illicit political mileage by moving in the wrong direction. And ultimately the press, which is a temple of truth, eventually misleads the society by creating an artificial sensation. So in the end, the entire episode is a total mess full of filth and garbage.
Hence,the prime factor should be to maintain a high-level discipline on the campus, and ih; political interference should firmly be resisted. Only in cases, where the head of the institution is found to have failed to ensure a safe campus, he or should be removed after a high-level inquiry, preferably a judicial inquiry, which must be held without delay.
In fact, today's students are the products of the environment in which they live. We cannot hope for a healthy baby in a polluted atmosphere. Psychiatrists believe that the carnal overtones that nearly all incidents assume are caused by the sexual frustration which is endemic among the student community.
According to psychologists, youngsters are at their most aggressive form when they enter the colleges. It is during the ages between 14 and 20 that most dramatic sexual development takes place in human beings. That is the time when youngsters are just beginning to become aware of themselves. And since, they do not have any way of legitimately expressing themselves sexually at their age, their instincts are satisfied vicariously. Most often this vicarious sense of enjoyment is derived through the rape and molestation of colleagues of the opposite sex.
There are other factors as well, responsible for the sexual perversion of youngsters, that is, the family influence has been declining because of the absence of parents at home for long hours, which they spend in their own social engagements. Thus the youngsters grow up under the care of undesirable servants or wayward friends.
Then the influence of the sex-oriented movies have a profound impact on the conduct and character of the young. Devoid of parental control and growing up in the company of wayward friends, they get addicted to alcohol and drugs and sexual molestation and rapes as well. And, by the time they are out of college, many of them have already a good deal of sexual experience.
Unfortunately, our educational institutions are severely inflicted with political Interference today. In several colleges, antisocial elements enjoy the patronage of one or the other political group or party.
However, in the lawless State of Goa, where the heads of any institution are appointed on the political basis, and changed with every change of government, and even the chief ministers in the same government, where admissions are secured with money and muscle power, and where the student community is linked with the youth wing of most of the political parties, and utilised the same for the booth capturing during the elections,then naturally, the indiscipline and violence have been the way of life in almost all the colleges in Goa.
Incidence of eve-teasing and molestation of girls within the campus is a common phenomenon in Goa, but seldom reported to campus authorities, who by and large, avoid taking any firm action against the culprits, who are either bullies, members of the student union, or relatives of some ministers, MPs, MLAs or bureaucrats.
Today, the criminals rule the educational institutions. So no government in Goa can wash out the filth in any of the college campuses.
Today, one can see students who are perpetual absentees get first class marks in exams. Most of them don't even know what subjects they have opted for. The education mafia handles everything for them for cash. Few today, look upon the colleges as models of a good life.
What sort of portrait do the colleges hold before the community today? Not flattering for sure. The old idea of a school, a temple of learning, which the young inherited from their fathers and grandfathers has long ceased with the liberation of Goa from the Portuguese rule and a new one is born.
After all the dignity of a girl student anywhere in Goa is at stake because there is a headless civilisation. And the educational institutions have formed a triad of sex-drugs-crime. This disease is incurable. -------------------------------------- HERALD 13/06/03 page 6 --------------------------------------
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