After circular with regressive rules for girl-students goes viral, TN college denies issuing it

College however accepts they don’t allow girls to wear leggings, tight tops and jeans pants.

news Moral Policing

By Pheba Mathew

In keeping with the tradition of placing medieval restrictions on students in some of the colleges in Tamil Nadu, a well-known engineering college in Chennai is said to have released a set of regressive rules and regulations for its female students. After an image of the “special instructions for girls” was circulated online, the college, Sri Sai Ram Engineering College, has denied such a circular was issued.

The single-page list of rules and regulations had 22 pointers, all of them said to be “big no’s” for girls.

The list includes a ban on wearing leggings, tight pants or tops, heavy earrings and even bars students from celebrating birthdays in the college campus. Designer watches cannot be worn, and girls are not allowed to talk to boys, according to the list.

The circular also states that students should not bring mobile phones, pen-drives and sim-cards to the campus. Even more bizarre is the rule that students should not bring sweets, chocolates and other snacks in bulk quantity to share with friends.

Responding to this document, the college Principal Dr. C.V Jayakumar of the Sri Sai Ram Engineering College said, “This is a move by someone who wanted to tarnish the image of our reputed college. The document does not have any authorized signature”.

Further, Dr. K. Maran, a professor said, “All the documents in our institution have the principal’s signature before it is sent to others which clearly proves that it is a fake document”.

The college authorities also claimed that they have cultural events, sports day and symposiums. They also pointed to the 4th edition TEDx which happened in their college last week, stating that they were liberal about extra-curricular activities.

Talking about the uniform code however, college officials accepted that girls are not allowed to wear leggings, tight tops and jeans within the college and are only allowed to wear chudidars in the college campus.

College administrators defended themselves by saying that Sri Sai Ram Engineering College is considered to be among the top ten colleges in the state. They plan to lodge a complaint with the cyber-cell over the image which is being circulated online.

This however does not come as a shock to those who are aware of the strict impositions of rules in Tamil Nadu’s engineering colleges. Read more about the gender-prisons of Tamil Nadu here, a special report on how some of the most popular colleges in Chennai practice gender discrimination, impose absurd rules and police students in the name of discipline and education.