There are various factors that contribute to a miserable college experience — non-understanding parents, being unable to develop or carry out a relationship; overly conservative college authorities; inefficient teaching faculty; aggressive non-teaching staff and genuine lack of focus or the belief that you lack focus in life, future and career.

There are arts-college type engineering colleges that don’t care about what you do. They don’t care whether you study, whether you attend the class or whether you even pass the exam. You are free to do what you want to do. There are liberal colleges that pay attention to your marks and exam performance but don’t otherwise bother about what you do in the classroom or campus. And there are the highly conservative, what we call Hitler-type colleges, many of which reflect a rule of dictatorship. These colleges control every aspect of a student’s life. Not a single action of yours will escape their eyes. Any minor deviation from the standard practice established by the college management invites punishment.

It is these Hitler-type colleges that are the worst category for all students irrespective of whether you fall under the ‘studious’ or ‘non-studious’ category. I include ‘studious’ students also because in other colleges, if you study well, the college staff will not harass you with rules. But in these colleges, even the academically well-performing students are harassed with ‘rules’.

Sadly, lot of our engineering colleges fall under this type. A few of their many ways of harassing their unfortunate students are:

Internals:

About 80% of our overall semester marks come from the subject paper we write in the final exam and 20% from the internal assessment of the department head and class teacher. It is unclear both at national and state-level whether there is any standard procedure as to how this internal assessment has to be done. While some colleges are liberal and give above 15 marks out of 20, keeping in mind the interest of the student, many colleges use a combination of attendance, class tests, mid-semester exams and ‘behaviour’. There is no standard or pre-fixed procedure.

In colleges where the teachers, heads of department and the principal decide the evaluation procedure, internal assessment does not serve the purpose of assessing the students but often serves as a blackmailing tool to break the backbone of students who ‘rebel’ and don’t fall in-line with the college management.

Leave applications:

In most universities, 75% to 80% attendance is the required percentage that will enable a student to appear for semester exams. A semester is for six months, which has about 180 days. If you cancel out the weekends, national holidays and final exams, we have about 150 working days. According to this rough estimate, a student is eligible for at least 10 to 20 days leave in a semester. However, most engineering college students will know that it is very difficult to obtain even a few days leave for any important work. If 75% attendance is necessary or enough, then the student is automatically eligible to take the remaining 25% of the working days off for their personal purposes or in case of an emergency. This reasoning, however, is not accepted by the colleges.

The issue of attendance becomes even more difficult in colleges where the internal assessment is linked to the attendance. Here, a student with 100% attendance will have more chances of scoring a full 20 in their internals than a student who has 80 or 90% attendance. Even if the students maintain the required attendance, they stand chances of losing out on their internal marks.

There is, of course, a great exception called the ‘on-duty’ leave, popularly known as ‘O.D’. This is granted for missing college due to an educational event you have taken part in. But their graciousness ends there, as their obsession with rules resurfaces again. O.Ds are only granted if you appear for an event related to engineering, not if you wish to participate in a literary, artistic or social event.

Dress code:

No matter what the moral guardians of the society say, students do know the difference between an educational institution and a sea-side beach club and can dress appropriately according to the occasion. However, colleges have made it a part of their educational agenda to decide how the students should dress. The most affected by these dress codes are the girls. They are brain-washed, from a young age, into thinking that they have to dress in a certain way to be respected and to protect their culture. If they fail to do so, they are told that they disrespect and hurt our tradition.

Almost in all engineering colleges, the mandatory attire for girls is a salwar-khameez or churidhar. Several conservative colleges even have ‘dress squads’ to check whether the imposed rules are being followed.

On cultural occasions, girls are asked to come dressed in sarees to promote the Indian culture. I’ve always wondered why when we boys can come dressed in shirts and pants even for cultural celebrations, which have nothing to do with Indian attire or tradition, why not let the girls dress in shirts and pants as well? It is ironic how shirts and pants become Indian wear for boys but become western wear for girls. This again shows how we expect women from a young age to carry the burden of culture, while men can dress and behave as per their wish and comfort.

How can a supposedly scientific educational institution send a female student back home for wearing a shirt instead of a salwar? It’s a shame that in India, we have engineering institutions that judge a woman’s scientific capacity based on her dress instead of her intelligence.

Many colleges and universities have even completely banned jeans. They seem to associate jeans with indiscipline and a careless attitude. Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs wear jeans at work and have created life-changing technological products. Here, colleges that ban jeans under the excuse that students will study better differently dressed cannot even guarantee 50 percent campus placement.

Dress code is another area where engineering colleges can learn from Arts colleges. Most arts colleges don’t impose dress regulations on the students; neither do the students misuse this freedom. In popular arts colleges, you will find that their dressing shows a lot of variety within accepted limits of decency and public decorum.

Moral policing and invasion of the personal rights of students:

Educational institutions, especially those in south India, think that just because a student studies with them the personal and social life of the student must be regulated by the college, in the ‘interest’ and ‘welfare’ of the student. Many top engineering colleges and universities in India have their own definition of ‘engineering discipline’. According to them college is a place to only study and socializing is not allowed. Many colleges run by social conservative groups have taken extreme measures to prevent boys and girls from talking to each other. These colleges also have separate seating arrangements for boys and girls from classrooms to canteens. All forms of social entertainment are strictly prohibited and the focus is kept only on classroom-based education; which, by the way, is often not great in such colleges.

One of the inside jokes we had in college portrays this trait of engineering colleges very effectively —‘Welcome to Tamil Nadu’s engineering colleges, where HODs fail you if you are caught speaking with a girl.’

Certificate Blackmail:

Many students would have experienced this at school level itself. Schools and colleges generally collect the birth, transfer and educational certificates from students which they only return after you complete the course. Consequently, if you get into any trouble with the management and want to get transferred to another college, you may not be allowed to until you pay the full or partial fee for the remaining years.

Patience — the golden virtue required to survive in such engineering colleges.

Imagine your parents being forced to travel a hundred kilometers to visit the college because you questioned a college rule, because you didn’t give ’enough respect’ to a teacher or because you failed in a class test.

What you just imagined is an everyday reality in several engineering colleges in our country. All these rules are painted as discipline and its violation is treated as ‘indiscipline’, which is where your control over yourself comes into play. It is best for you not to lose your temper before the teachers or principal, under such moments of injustice and humiliation.

There is no national definition for ‘indiscipline’ within the context of educational institutions in India. Colleges and universities have framed their own definition to fit their dictatorial, misogynistic and totalitarian attitude. In one college talking to girls is considered as indiscipline. In another, failing in exam is indiscipline. While colleges usually don’t selectively pick and target individual students, when the students happen to break these college rules, they are marked out. There are teachers and heads of departments who deliberately fail and punish students who may have questioned the rules of the college or for supposedly failing to respect people in authority sufficiently.

Colleges have excessive control over students’ life, from their internal assessment marks to their social behavior. If you have joined such a college, you are very unfortunate and deserve sympathy, but you have to push yourself safely through the four years. It is also advisable to keep a mental track of the few liberal teachers.

Future interaction with college:

If a student intends to go abroad for higher studies, they are required to have a ‘character certificate’ from the college they studied in. Unfortunately, in our educational system, character is judged based on how many rules you break rather than how many rules you live by. Another terrible way that colleges use to assess the character of their students is based on their mark sheets. As if a student who scores 90% has higher ethical and moral values than a student who has arrears.

It is advisable to avoid any intense confrontations with the staff or principal of the college if you have a Masters course planned for the future. (Perhaps western and European colleges should understand that in Indian engineering colleges, you have a ‘good character’ only if you keep your mouth shut and follow the barbaric rules.) The brighter side, however, is that a lot of colleges often give a standard character certificate to all students.

Six ugly incidents that happened in engineering colleges in and around Chennai:

Ramesh was studying in a popular engineering college near Chennai. On his classmate’s birthday, he shook her hand and wished her while they were waiting for the college bus to come, miles away from their college campus. The college bus driver saw this and complained to the college management who immediately suspended the boy for 30 days. His suspension led to a deficiency in attendance and he was hence unable to appear for that semester’s final exam.

During a random college raid for cell phones, a student named Abhishek had his cell phone seized by the college Physical Trainer. (Only in India, we find sports coaches checking for I.D. cards and cell phones, instead of teaching physical exercise.) While going through Abhishek’s messages in the inbox, the P.T. coach found a joke from a girl named Ramya. He had saved that girl’s name along with the course she was doing as ‘Ramya ECE’.The coach called the number to confirm it was the same girl and when she answered, both students were immediately taken to the principal’s office by the P.T. coach like a prized loot catch from a war. Fortunately for both of them, the matter ended with a fine of 10,000 rupees each, rather than a blow to their degree. Assuming that carrying a cell-phone is against college-rules, even though it is not against Indian laws, it still doesn’t give the college authorities the right to invade the privacy of the student by reading their messages.

The students could have gone to court but decided not to, in spite of facing a lot of humiliation, because they knew that a suspension could have made things worse and just paying the fine, however large the amount, is the safest way out, since future internal marks and co-operation during practical exams are in the hands of the college administration, where they can extract revenge, if the students did take the matter to court.

Vikram, another engineering student in another college, got into an argument with the college authorities after the college management had cancelled the permission given for a cultural event. After refusing to apologize, he was suspended for two weeks. He filed a court case against the college management stating that arguing is not an act of indiscipline and the court ruled in his favour and asked the college to revoke the suspension. Before filing the case, however, he failed to take into consideration his own academic position within the college. His attendance, being already low, the college used it as an excuse to prevent him from appearing for the semester exam. This time, he could not file a court case, as the college followed the university rules. He then wrote all the papers in the next semester as arrears and also missed attending the campus recruitments.

“Girls at 17 can be easily influenced. They need the injection of discipline and I give them that. We are equally strict with boys as well. Students come to study, so why they should talk with each other? Do people talk to each other in temples and churches, so what is the need to mingle in colleges? “ – This is a statement made by a University Chancellor and owner of many educational institutions on boys and girls interacting with each other in colleges. Now you know why so many of our youngsters grow up without being able to differentiate between flirting, talking and harassing.

One of India’s leading private universities removed two female students from the college hostel after they questioned the discriminatory rules imposed selectively on female students which stated that the girls can leave the college campus only once a week and should return by 8 p.m. This ‘grant of freedom’ is given only after their parents send a fax stating their permission. The boys, however, don’t need any approval letter from parents and can leave and return to the campus as they like. In a democratic country like ours, girls have all the right to even question the Prime Minister if they feel discriminated against but in an engineering college they get suspended for questioning a college rule.

This outrageous incident happened in an engineering college run by an industrial group. The college administration had installed CCTV cameras in student areas to monitor them and the chairman could watch the CCTV recordings in his room. One day he noticed a girl talking with her classmate after their class got over. Immediately he summoned the girl and scolded her for talking to a boy. As a result of the humiliation she faced and from the fear that the college would inform her parents about the incident, she went to her room and hanged herself to death.

Stating that this last incident was only one of many such instances where an engineering student has taken the drastic step of killing themselves due to humiliation or pressure from the college, I now leave it to you to decide whether these colleges exist to improve the lives of students or to torture them.

From frustrated students to bad citizens:

Gender-segregation is a common occurrence in many engineering colleges run by social conservative groups. Imagine the quality of students who graduate without knowing how to talk to the opposite gender, how to say ‘hello’ to the girl or boy they like or how to even differentiate between flirting and talking. Restrictions imposed by college authorities on the social life of the students often have a bad effect on the society once these students leave the college and become an active part of the society.

One of the best places to promote gender equality is the place where our boys and girls study and one of the best ways to create gender equality is letting girls know how men think and by allowing boys understand what women want.

Instead, what the boys and girls of our society know about the opposite sex is often based on their personal interpretation of novels and movies. We raise boys and girls as two separate species in schools and colleges, and after becoming adults, they struggle to understand the other gender. In 21st century India, several schools and colleges, especially those in south India still prevent boys and girls from talking to each other. I believe that such places of education are also responsible for the existing gender inequality among our people.

Violating college rules is not the same as violating the rules of government of India. What is seen as a crime or a mistake under the college’s rules and regulations need not be a crime under the Indian Penal Code or the Indian constitution. The law of the land guarantees us certain fundamental rights and freedom which cannot be taken away even by elected governments. Colleges and educational institutions have no right to restrict this freedom given to the student. Unfortunately, many colleges think they are above the law.