Reopen EFLU Hostels

Petition to be submitted tomorrow by the current BA and PhD students for reopening the university with 100% capacity.

*Statement from the Students' Action Committee and Call for an Online Meet*

1. In light of the recent spike in Covid-19 cases, the Telangana state government has ordered a temporary shutdown of all educational institutions except medical colleges. The Education Minister has specified that the hostels of schools and colleges – both public and private – will also be closed.

What this means for our movement is that we are not in a position to proceed with our protest activities for now. Section 3.2 (i) of the latest UGC guidelines for reopening of campuses (dated Nov 5, 2020) makes it a prerequisite for central universities too that “the concerned State Government must have declared the area safe for reopening of educational institutions”.

The latest government order doesn't mark out any specific regions as unsafe; it has ordered a state-level shut down of educational institutions, which comes with the possible legal implication that Telangana as a whole is currently unsafe for educational institutions to be open. Whether the order may be interpreted differently is a matter to be fought out in courts.

Regardless of where the law stands, the fact remains that the Indian state and its institutions, including public universities, have repeatedly deserted the common masses (including students) and forced them to fend for themselves. We have seen the travesty of simply imposing a lockdown without any state support.

Asking students to simply remain in their homes is to leave them on their own without any institutional support. Public universities must do more, including facilitating a safe environment at least for those who are most vulnerable in their homes due to socio-economic and other factors.
This requires a collective student movement against the Indian state – one that cannot be carried out at the level of just one or two universities.

With the above considerations in mind, the committee proposes to temporarily call off our ongoing protest.
While there may be too few academic days left for final year students to hope to reenter the hostels, the demand for hostel reopening will remain pertinent for the majority of the student body.
Also, given the anti-student ways of the EFLU administration, they may not make any plans or preparations to reopen the hostels and other essential amenities even after the state government reopens its educational institutions, in which case we will have to resume our struggle.

2. The TA-EC did not respond to our request for a meeting on March 23. We proposed to meet at 6 PM, but the news about the order had come in by then. Ideally, the proposal to pause our protest should have been discussed by the TA-EC and the SAC together, but since the beginning, they have adopted a high-handed approach towards us and ignored our emails.
That being said, we thank the few members within the TA who have been truly supportive of our cause and who tried their best.

3. We invite everyone to join an online meet at 9 PM on March 24 (Wednesday) to discuss the situation and reach a concrete decision on the first point above.
We also need to discuss how we, as a student community, can remain organised in the long term despite this short-term crisis.

Please join our meeting via this link:
https://meet.google.com/sqx-juob-dxw

As a tactic to break the hunger strike, the administration has refused access to toilets for the striking students. Even in the cases of extreme disagreements, it is a common practice worldwide to let protestors use the basic facilities like drinking water and toilets. But this administration doesn't have an iota of humanity left in them. And on top of that, they have the audacity to say that they are taking all the decisions with students' safety in mind.

Hunger strike for hostel reopening issue.

A Recap of Events – Ep. 2

As per the stipulations made by the admin (refer to Ep. 1), the SAC submitted a detailed letter at the registrar's office on 18th February. The letter provided an overview of the opinions collected in the survey, highlighted the concerns of the students in need of hostels and demanded an official circular accepting the student demands. The results of the survey and an appendix of the UGC guidelines for reopening of campuses were also attached with the letter.

On the very same day (Feb 18), the admin released a circular stating that online teaching shall continue and no in-person classes would be held until 31st March. But the students hadn't demanded in-person classes in the first place; they were only asking for hostel and library access, due to real issues such as lack of access to the internet and other necessary technological resources in their home environments. The university circular thus not only failed to acknowledge the needs of the students but also managed to circumvent their demands.

As the letter submitted by the SAC had clearly not been taken into due consideration by the admin, the committee chose to overlook the circular for the best and resolved to continue the struggle. Committee members tried constantly to get in touch with the admin, but to no avail. They were either hung up on or were served excuses, such as that the registrar was not free to conduct a meeting. The admin avoided any interaction and stalled proceedings at every given opportunity.

The gross negligence on display from the admin prompted the SAC to give out a call for online modes of protest to be adopted. In a mass email campaign, students sent copies of the detailed letter that the admin had refused to consider. Students also raised their grievances to their professors by holding placards up during classes. A Twitter storm was organised as well.

Despite all of this, the admin remained unresponsive. On 25th February, the students resumed their sit-in protest in front of Gate 2 and boycotted their afternoon session of online classes.
(TBC)

A news report that covered our protest at the time:
Newsmeter – https://cutt.ly/zzSMzDm

A Recap of Events – Ep. 1

On 12th February, EFLU students started a sit-in protest demanding the reopening of the university hostels for students who are in need of them.

This was after the university administration (admin) chose not to respond to the demands that a large number of students had been making since January. A petition signed by students had been submitted, and a mass email campaign had been organised.

About two hours into the sit-in, the admin were ready to meet three of the protesting students. In the meeting, they asked the students to prepare a detailed proposal. They said they may consider reopening the hostel and library facilities in phases from March 1, provided they manage to solve some logistical issues such as the malfunctioning water supply to the hostels. They also raised concerns about whether students would fail to follow Covid-19 protocol and fall sick.

The admin also refused to issue any notice or circular stating their intention to consider reopening the hostels by any specific date. They insisted they would do so only if the students submitted a detailed proposal as to which section(s) of students should be prioritised for hostel reentry.

After this meeting, an action committee was formed from among the protesting students. The committee conducted a survey (which was filled by 845 students out of the 1300-strong EFLU student population) and submitted a new letter with details of the survey to the admin.

In the survey, 522 students mentioned that they need access to the hostels urgently, which is less than 40% of the enrolled students. In view of this and the fact that the latest UGC guidelines allow up to 50% of the students on campus at any point of time, the committee did not see a point in prioritising any particular section of students over another – with over 800 hostel rooms in place, all the students in need could be accommodated. Therefore, the issues and concerns of the students were only highlighted, not classified into any order of priority. (TBC)

Two relevant news reports about our struggle from the period covered so far:
1) Newsmeter – https://cutt.ly/wzY9E3v
2) Deccan Chronicle – https://cutt.ly/izY9GHv

*Call for Boycott of the Essay Competition*

The university has invited entries for an essay writing competition as a part of "Azadi Ka Amrut Mahotsav", to commemorate the 75th year of India's independence. This is yet another PR event by the ruling fascist regime, whose ideological forefathers betrayed the struggle for independence and sided with the British colonizers.

As per the notification, the VC is the chief patron of the event, and the two co-ordinators other than the chief co-ordinator hold administrative positions. They are inviting essays on a topic such as "The Contribution of Youth in National Building".

With the kind of apathy the EFLU admin have shown towards students in urgent need of hostel facilities, we must question how inclusive the 'nation' in their scheme of 'national building' is. To mark our collective dissent against their sheer lack of empathy towards the everyday struggles of students, we call upon the students to boycott this competition.

https://www.efluniversity.ac.in/75%20years%20independence-mar2021.pdf

To strengthen our ongoing protest to , we need to find new and effective ways of marking our dissent. And what can argue for our collective cause more sincerely than our individual stories of struggle?

Let us document the real experiences that our administration refuses to acknowledge.

We appeal to each and every student of EFLU to send us write-ups, videos, recordings or protest content of any other kind to be posted in our social media pages. Your identity will be protected to prevent any unwarranted consequences.

Use any of the following methods to send your entries:

1. Send an email to [email protected]

2. Send a message on the page: https://www.facebook.com/reoopenefluhostels

3. Send a message on the Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/reopenefluhostels/

4. Directly message on WhatsApp on any of these numbers: 7013936466, 9746533439, 9207643963

Action Items for Today (March 10, 2021):

1) If you haven’t filled the online class boycott opinion form already, please do so on this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1LkZhW3q2Hwc4vyUTKh0UBwxR7VhJ-TpQs_eDdcJQMgk

2) Send an email to the education ministry on these three IDs: [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]

The subject and body of the email may be copied from here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CC1Q_bZEGPSdYRhJBepUF9A-a6Gyb0nu

3) Send any form of protest content (write-ups, recordings, videos etc) of your own to [email protected] or to our social media pages. You may also directly message us on WhatsApp.

We are a collective of EFLU students demanding a phased reopening of the university hostels for students who are in need of them. With the shutdown of campuses in the face of the pandemic and an ill-planned, premature shift to online classes, the last year has been a struggle for most of us. We conducted a survey among the students on roll to get a more detailed understanding of the nature, extent and gravity of our individual and collective concerns.

Out of the 845 students who participated in the survey, 522 stated that they need the hostels to be reopened, and this was for a variety of pressing reasons: lack of access to stable internet and other necessary technological resources (229 students), abusive environments at home (109 students), living with disabilities in unfavourable conditions at home (34 students), deterioration of mental health as a result of the home environment (213 students), drop in quality of research output due to lack of access to offline material and resources (324 students) and so on.

It may be noted that the number of students who have stated their need for hostels is less than 50% of the strength of the university, which is well within the upper limit set by the UGC (Annexure 1). The UGC has issued comprehensive guidelines for the administration and the students to prevent/manage any potential cases of Covid-19.

The results of the survey point to an urgent situation and a need for its immediate redressal. However, despite mass petitions, email campaigns and a sit-in protest by students outside the gates of the university, the administration has refused to budge on their stance of not opening campus facilities to students.

The administration must be held accountable for not only refusing to grasp the nature of our concerns but also for prolonging our suffering. As students in a public university, we must be understood as stakeholders and not mere consumers of services provided by the university. Our demands reflect the real social crisis that has been wrought by the mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

We call upon you to raise your voices for student rights and strengthen our ongoing movement!