Last night was no different than the previous ones. Doomscrolling, as they are calling it now, frantic calls for friends in need, and a lot of overthinking about the whirlwind of a journey this has been since 2020, the year it all began, and the year I graduated. At least in theory.
I think of the numerous opportunities and little bundles of happiness we had to let go of because a virus didn’t leave us with an alternative- lost job opportunities, goodbyes, congratulatory hugs, and just the company of a friendship’s silence in a shared physical space.
It’s been a year and now as the batch of 2021 passes, my heart feels heavy at the thought of how for most of them, more than half of their campus journeys were spent in the vicinity of a laptop, in a closed room. Despite carrying the burden of innumerable losses, amidst spending breaks between classes and nights doing relief work helping people, the administration in campuses refuted their plea of cancelling examinations.
What does it tell us about a system that cannot cater to the very people it was made to serve? When students are trying to clutch to life with (mis) governance that is fatal to minds and bodies alike, our authorities have been busy gaslighting students, showing astounding neglect, ignorance, and lack of empathy. History will be kind to students, that is a fact, but history will be severely unkind to these “systems” living in a veil of their privilege.
I remember a friend, who teaches at a media institute in Delhi, saying, “In the larger scheme of things, the course is not that important. Learning matters and any teacher would be proud if their students cared for the society. When students start initiatives for relief work and send me a link, I feel really proud that their priorities are what you would want them to be, and not the general ones that the world ‘expects’ them to have.”
I felt good reading it, happy even. I could see how many students would have just felt acknowledged had this been told to them. This is the bare minimum that students desire from their professors who are their partners in the exercise of learning and curiosity. The students need and deserve that the system is condemned, for it also harms professors, suffocating their pursuits and ethics, a lot of times.
And call out these 7 professors did. These 7 posts are for all the students who are feeling cornered, ignored and unseen by the system. They see you. I see you. And I promise that so many others who truly matter do. Thank you for your patience, perseverance and relentless pursuit of hope and good. To you.
The students have spent a considerable time of their college life alone. That’s a lot to deal with. No friend to go eat out with, no shoulder to cry on, no privilege to exchange a mere glance with a stranger, absolute absence of stimulating and riveting classroom discussions, and add to that, the loss of a billion job opportunities amidst an already sinking Indian employment market.
That this is a raging pandemic with over 4 lakh COVID cases a day, that we haven’t even hit the peak yet, that mental health is crumbling with hope becoming a rare commodity in this pool of despair wired at the edges with numbness- none of it mattered to the system or to the people running the system. Amidst such a glaring crisis, there are several incidents every day depicting the cruelty being meted out by professors even- from casteism, abuse to gaslighting.
What students understand are your limitations, professors, your utter helplessness in front of the system, but when you deny them the bare minimum of solidarity and empathy, you do them, your profession and the community wrong.
Please stand by them. Let’s shed the ‘status’ that is assumed by virtue of your ‘roles’ in classrooms.
A few words displaying pride, a moment of encouragement, a note to take care of themselves, a simple message of “I understand, you’re going through a lot” weighs a lot more than we think.