Hi, everyone. When most of you hear the tag of ‘National Law University’, you beam with joy and a sense of pride. It makes you think that the university is great and a cultural and educational haven for students. It is where students learn the finer points of law, debate and become the next ‘Harvey Spectre’. This is far from the truth. Let me tell you the real story of a National Law University, Hidayatullah National Law University. As a student, I am well aware of the ground reality and the things that I am about to tell may surprise you.
With the recent pandemic and global halt in the country, I understand that students are among the first to suffer. With universities being shut down, all of us are at home. But our home away from home has been doing nothing to facilitate our education through these tough times. Our university was among the first to shut down. There wasn’t even a notice from either the state or the central government, but the university announced that the students have to clear their hostels in a span of two days.
Hats off to our Student Body Association (SBA) for standing up for us and negotiating a couple of days and smooth transport of students out of the university. When the lockdown was announced, our universities, after a few weeks, announced that classes would be held online via google classroom. Fair enough, it was the right time to move on to an online medium. However, in that too, many of our professors did not upload classes regularly.
If I take the consensus among the batches, only half of their professors were regularly uploading classes and providing reading materials. I understand it’s a new medium for everyone, but colleges, universities, and even tuition centres have better online infrastructure than an NLU. Not uploading the lectures isn’t the only issue. Many of our professors won’t even teach us properly. They lack the basic skills to communicate with the students and are unable to effectively teach us. This isn’t the problem of an online medium.
To state it bluntly, we have professors who can’t even speak English in classrooms which have students from all over India. Adding fuel to the desolate fire, the online resources are scarce. Despite charging a hefty sum, we as law students do not have remote access to even the basic sites like Jstor and SCC online. Today after 8 months, the situation is far from improving. The University has no idea how it will take our exams. We don’t know what we have to study or from where. Our professors still do not upload lectures on time except a few and some have not even taken one lecture. Silently observing the destructive pattern that the administration takes regularly, it is my firm opinion that the situation won’t improve in the next few months.
Coming to the other problems that plague our beloved university, almost 10 days ago, all of the students were asked to vacate the hostels and take our belongings. The reason given by the university was that the state administration is taking control over the university and would be setting up a Covid Center. Another reason given by the university was that the university noticed “water seepage and fungus infection” in some rooms and therefore for sanitation, all the students have to collect our belongings and vacate our rooms.
This is the most ludicrous thing I have heard in my entire life. While the reasoning given by the university about the state government taking over the university is correct, but for setting up a Covid Centre, there were already 500+ beds available at the University’s disposal. Further, in Raipur itself, Covid cases are on a steady decline and the Covid Centers which were set up are now being discontinued.
The district administration is in no way taking over HNLU (according to a source at SBA) as it has been decided in a meeting on the 26th of this month. In addition to the above reasons, I believe that the beautification of the university should not be a priority of our college when we don’t even enter into the rankings of the top law colleges. Further, asking 800+ students to come from all corners of the country to Raipur, just to empty their rooms so that the university can be more picturesque shows how much our administration takes our health and well being into concern.
As a student who has been walking the hallways of the university for the past few years, I ask the administration if you want to improve the “water seepage and fungus infection”, kindly address the problems in the main academic block. It becomes flooded even with the slightest of rain. And if any of you are familiar with Raipur’s weather, the condition of the main academic block is more or less like a flooded Bombay Road.
Despite repeated emails by the SBA, the university did not address any of the valid concerns raised by the students. Although on the 30th, the university did extend the deadline to 20th November 2020, they haven’t withdrawn the notice which can potentially lead to its students contacting Covid-19.
In the notice, the university has also provided alternative means if the students do not want to travel. One can request a courier service to pack up our stuff or the university shall pack our stuff up and store it. There are so many problems with this means. Many of the students have left valuables like cash, laptops at the university due to the sudden shutdown. How can we trust a third party to walk into our rooms and clear everything up? Also, the suggestion that the university shall keep out stuff safe is a joke in itself.
According to the administration, they have no idea where they will house and keep all the items belonging to each student. In such a case, who would be responsible? By the principle of bailment, I am guessing it’s the university. But they won’t reimburse us for a penny.
Moving on to the monetary issues, this is not the first time that HNLU has been plagued with questions of misappropriating funds and providing no reimbursement to students. The university was shut down in March and we have already paid the fees for the months of March and April. This also includes the Mess Fees and other fees like Gym, IT, Transport which we haven’t used since. Since June, the administration has been deliberating over the fees for the next semester promising that they would take account of the previous months.
When the fee structure was announced, not much had been deducted. From the previous paragraph, you might have a vague idea of how “amazing” our university is when it comes to education. HNLU is charging the complete library fees when it can’t even provide us with the scanned copies of books we have to read. It is changing us with IT services when everyone one of us is paying for an internet connection from our pocket.
Unlike other universities that have provided for reimbursement, our college refuses to even reimburse us for the mess fees of the previous semesters. It is like comparing it to the lower levels of government offices, where despite hundreds of letters, thousands of visits, all you have in your hand is an empty promise that it will be done sooner.
In light of all this, I as a student of HNLU would like to say that my administration has shown sheer apathy towards its students. With no coherent plan of how it will take classes, lack of proper faculty, no plan on how all the examinations will take place in the span of four months, asking us to vacate our college, high fees, all I can feel is a state of sadness, frustration, and a sense of resentment towards our college authorities.
Yours Sincerely
An HNLU Student