PRESIDENT Abdul Hamid urged the Vice-Chancellors of public universities to perform their duties with dedication and honesty and stay away from corruption and irregularities. The President, also the Chancellor of the university, made the appeal while addressing the first convocation of Jagannath University. He called upon the teachers to uphold the dignity of their profession without being attracted to any kind of greed. Some teachers use the university job as a shield as they are very reluctant to taking their scheduled classes but don’t hesitate to take their private classes, he said urging the VCs to look into the matter strictly. The academic programmes of the universities must be monitored to ensure that those were being administered properly. The recent case in Jahangirnagar University which prompted the resignation of the erstwhile Chhatra League President Rezwanul Haque Chowdhury Shovon and General Secretary Golam Rabbani who reportedly demanded “4 to 6 per cent” in cuts from a Tk 1,445-crore project on the JU campuses from its VC is a prime example of a situation which a VC should handle properly but was unable to do so.
The first thing which VCs should do all over the country is not pay any attention to the student wing of the party in power — in this case the BCL. Any unreasonable demand such as taking cuts from development budgets or any acts of violence in campus must be dealt with promptly. If the VCs can stand firmly then 90 percent of the irregularities on campus — which are basically committed by student wing members of the ruling party — will be stopped. They must therefore perform their duties religiously and with dedication — just as the President has ordered them to.
We hope his government will take his advice seriously not to appoint incompetent VCs only for the consideration that they would be politically loyal and useful. It is so condemnable that the VCs are chosen for political control of the public universities negating the importance of higher education. We know President’s own government does not want the kind of VCs he desired
