Three top colleges in India crack down on student freedom in just one week

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The News Minute | March 26, 2015 | 5:22 p.m. IST

The Madras Christian College in Chennai and St Stephen's and the Jamia Milla Islamia in Delhi have been in the news this week, but surprisingly for curbing freedom.

While the MCC admonished its students for taking pot-shots at the administration in their skits, students from St Stephens and Jamia Millia Islamia were also reportedly rebuked for separate instances.

Students from Jamia have been issued a show-cause notice by the administration with until March 31 to respond for running an awareness campaign using sanitary pads. On the other hand, the Principal of St. Stephens reportedly banned an e-magazine for allegedly carrying his interview without permission.

Madras Christian College:

After a much publicized campaign against tree-felling within the confines of the MCC campus, the college authorities didn’t take much kindly to students referring to the incident in their skits.

The campaign was launched by a college alumnus after reports of felling of trees within the campus in order to make way for solar panels.

The MCC has a yearly tradition of students performing a sarcastic take on the events of the past year.

The college reportedly asked a college warden to supervise the scripts which were to be performed. Scripts were subsequently rejected and one even ripped apart by the warden before the students had to come up with a script two days prior to the event on Saturday.

The warden also reportedly threatened the students by saying he controls their college degrees before a script, which was earlier rejected, was performed by the students.

“Without reading the script, he rejected it,” one of the students said, explaining that the previous two versions of the skit had more direct references to the tree-cutting.

Also read: Why the age-old Madras Christian College objected to a skit by students on trees

St. Stephens College:

According to a report by The Indian Express, the principal of St. Stephens, Valson Thampu, suspended an e-magazine started by a philosophy student for carrying his interview, allegedly without his permission. The college has also constituted a one-man committee to look into the matter.

In an email to his students, Thampu said: “It is unacceptable that despite being explicitly told not to publish anything (especially my interview) before I had the time to go through and clear the text, you went ahead in defiance. It denotes an awkward failure of education and that is why I cannot take it lightly.”

Devansh Mehta, the student who started St. Stephens Weekly didn’t seem to understand the reason for the ban though. “There was nothing offensive or problematic in the interview with the principal. He was happy with the interview”, he told the newspaper.

Jamia Millia Islamia:

The Jamia Milia Islamia (JMI) University in New Delhi recently served a show-cause notice to four of its students for sticking sanitary pads with feminist messages across the campus.

The students were inspired by the #PadsAgainstSexism campaign by German artist Elonë, and started a similar drive in their university and the city.

University administration says that though they are not against the message that was being promoted by the students, but the notice was served because they did not take permission to carry out the campaign in the campus.

"The students did not take the necessary permission from the administration to work on such a project, which is a violation of university rules," Mukesh Ranjan, Media Co-ordinator of JMI, told The News Minute.

"Several students as well as faculty members also told us they found it (sanitary pads stuck in campus) repugnant, and expressed their dislike," he added.