Editorial Desk :
Private universities must not allow students to become mastans of political parties. Politics is taught at the universities, so nobody needs to join political parties where students are diverted from education and become torturers, killers and extortionists as we have seen in public universities where university administration is ignored and university premises are used as crime centres. It is not done secretly but openly. Teachers of these universities are also doing dirty party politics. Today, political parties themselves do not know what politics is about. Politics in their hands has become a way for doing corruption and election robbery for dishonest businessmen to plunder public money.
The nation is worried that its future is going to be in the hands of thieves and thugs as its future leaders. The students do not hesitate to carry arms instead of books and are used as political musclemen. In return, they enjoy impunity for earning through extortion. They commit crimes jointly with police because they have the backing of the government.
Don’t call it student politics, for learning politics the students should be concentrating on education. In the words of a repentant professor, the universities have become jungles where value, ideology or virtues have no place and where it hurts to breathe.
Today, the fallen standard of education in the public universities and colleges is partly due to the wrong and very dangerous trend of student politics that has made a great number of students deviate from their main goal, that is, education.
It is very urgent that private university authorities quickly decide on the issue and ban party activities for which universities and other educational institutions are not the place. The present government is following a foreign blueprint to destroy our education which is expected
to build future leaders. It is also destroying our people’s dream of a free country.
According to a report of this newspaper yesterday, the BCL has formed its committees in Bangladesh’s most prominent private universities including North South University, BRAC University, Independent University, American International University – Bangladesh, Ahasanullah University of Science and Technology, East West University, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh, Daffodil International University, etc.
It has been also reported that the UGC, the apex body of the universities in Bangladesh, also expressed its worrying concern on the matter and said that student politics might create problems for the private universities.
The parents should take their children from private universities and demand back the huge money they pay if politics is allowed there. It is better to remain uneducated if these universities yield to political pressure and invite politics that destroys education.
Since the authorities of private universities have the sole discretion whether to allow student politics on campuses, we believe that authorities of each university will get together to save the high hopes we want to have about the private universities. The teachers and administrations need to show character and courage to defy the pressure from the government to recruit mastans and stop destroying our higher education. It would be a national disgrace if, as professors of the highest seats of learning, they do not show character and courage saving their students from thuggish politics.
