Amid the pandemic, we have heard scores of students express their grievances regarding new rules by their colleges. We, the students of Lovely Professional University (LPU), are in a fix because of the college’s rule which requires us to collect our belongings from the hostel and to pay the fees for those who are yet to before 30 September.
More students, on the guarantee of anonymity, wanted to raise their concerns.
“We are having great difficulty with the university authorities. Most of the students are from south or east part of India. It’s difficult to come to Jalandhar just for taking belongings back.”LPU student
The student added, “Right now, the hostel is empty. Nobody is living there and will not live until the university is open, so there is no sense in coming back just for belongings. They don’t care that they have over 20,000 hostel students if all of them come back, and they get infected, then who will be blamed for this?”
Noting that it has been around three weeks since the notification came around, another student said, “The university is misusing its power and pressurising us to take our stuff home.”
“In this pandemic situation where on a daily basis thousands of people are dying University is not cooperating with us,” the student added.
The world is facing a pandemic but LPU and some other private universities are telling their students to ‘come to the college, grab your luggage and move out’.
Unresponsive College App & Automated Mails
Another significant problem here is the huge gap in communication between us and the college authorities. LPU has a college application where there is a portal for us to send in our complaints, but there is no clarity or action.
“I tried to communicate with the authorities but was unable to clear the issue because there’s no platform where we can interact with the authorities. It’s just computer-generated replies or if we mail the problem to LPU email ID, the reply is same as the announcement,” noted a student.
We even requested the institution's management to help us and do something about this, but we got only one reply “please follow the instructions and protocol”.
The college has a population of around 30-35,000 students and in which around 20-25,000 live in hostels and suppose if all the students somehow end up going to the college sooner or later, then, what’s the guarantee that we wouldn’t be affected by COVID-19? The college wants us to make a new hub for coronavirus patients.
Warden Cannot Help Us
If money is the only thing they want, more than the lives of thousands of innocent students and their family, then we are ready to pay it. We have already paid our semester fees and if they want us to pay the hostel fees, then we are ready to pay that as well.
To be honest, the college provided us with two options, either we send our relatives/friends to take the luggage out, but they must have the keys of the cupboard/locker or assign the warden to shift our luggage in the cloakroom.
What is the problem here? Firstly, the warden has refused to clear the belongings of the students. Secondly, If we would hand over our luggage to the warden, including important files, they are at the risk of getting lost or destroyed because we have seen how they treat our luggage.
Many students have their laptops, important and costly belongings kept in the hostel rooms. Not all of us have relatives in the city or someone available to help us, moreover, they too, wouldn’t want to risk their health.
Another student said, “They gave us another option that our hostel warden will shift our luggage in cloakroom, but I left very sensitive stuff at my hostel like Foam RC Airplane, lots of electronic stuff and Lithium Polymer Battery (Which is alone capable of causing a fire if not maintained properly). I have nobody else who could go.”
LPU promised us to be fair and provide quality education, and not become a money-making University. Given how difficult it is to converse with the authorities, all we want is the college to pay heed to our issues, and if nothing, meet us halfway when talking about a solution.
The Quint also reached out to the LPU authorities for the aforementioned issues. Their response will be added as and when received.
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