WHEN most of the country’s public universities are going through a crisis situation at that time fresh unrest that erupted among the female students of Chattogram University has drawn the attention of concerned circles. Newspaper reports said female students of CU padlocked the gate of Jananetri Sheikh Hasina Hall on Sunday keeping the Provost and House Tutors inside demanding immediate publication of seat allotment list. Students said the construction work of Sheikh Hasina Hall was completed long ago but seat was not allotted.
The CU has currently 12 residential halls. Of them, four halls are for female students which are not sufficient enough in comparison to its huge demand. There are 24,283 students in the CU of them 15,598 are male and 8,685 are female. “As we are badly suffering due to the accommodation crisis, we staged demonstration several times for the seat allotment. Finally, the authorities took our viva on September 15 for the allotment but they did not publish the result even after one month, forcing us to go for the demonstration,” a female student told a newspaper.
We are surprised seeing the dilly-dally attitudes of CU authority. The CU situates at hilly landmass in Fatehpur Union of Hathazari Upazila, about 22 kilometres north of Chattogram city. The students who come from other districts have no other way but to manage a seat in the hall by any means. The female students suffer most due to lack of accommodation.
The scenario is almost same in the country’s other universities too. Taking this opportunity, student fronts at the universities allegedly force students residing in the halls to join their political programmes almost everyday intervening their studies. Besides, the student front of ruling party establishes a reign of terror in the dormitories. We have seen this same scenario in the tenures of all successive governments. In fact, seat scarcity in the halls is one of the reasons to compel a meritorious student to join in party politics.
The government should pay attention to the root cause for which students’ political activities often turn into violence. We must say, extension of infrastructural facilities, especially construction of adequate halls, in all public universities should be made to ensure proper academic atmosphere.
