Anti-intellectual behaviour of university students:

Ragging, irreparable damage to the mind

Continued from yesterday

Prof. Shantha K. Hennayake

These sessions are repeated in the morning and evening daily for almost six to seven weeks which constitute about half the 15 weeks of the first academic semester or 5.8 percent of the entire duration of stay in the University for a student following a four year special degree course.

The intensity of these sessions not only create physical fatigue but also mental exhaustion often leading to a few students collapsing and having to admit to the University Health Center. These are the busiest times for the University Health Center treating students for injuries, broken bones and mental trauma.

While a few students has to be admitted to Government hospitals for further treatment, some students leave the University forever not being able to cope with the agony of the welcome given by the student union and their leaders.

University : Gateway to intellectual world

The intimidation and terror tactics of the student union is immediately effective. While all these heinous crimes are being committed and witnessed by everyone, none of the victims ever complain against the raggers for fear of reprisal.

Even when they complain as a first reaction, they often withdraw their complaints subsequently because of the continuing threat and intimidation. Occasionally, a few students get caught in the act of ragging and are punished. Then the very student union organises protests, rallies, and boycotting of lectures with the support of the first year students to get the punishment revoked using the same arguments they made in the “sessions” that the University administrators are anti-student and punishment imposed are unjust and cruel!

In the evenings at the residential halls, a more violent and ugly form of ragging characterized by intimidation and physical violence is inflicted upon those who are suspected of being a challenge to the union. The victims of these violence too end up in the University Health Center but they too refrain from making any formal complaint for the fear of further violent reprisal.

Further, the student union use the ragging season to mobilize the first years to participate in various agitations and protests organized by the JVP’s IUFSU mostly in Colombo. There is a close temporal correlation between the ragging season and the mass demonstrations by University students. Under pressure, intimidation and threat, the first year students are made to face the frontal assaults in these demonstrations.

The end product of these ragging sessions is an irreversible and irreparable damage to the intellectual mind of the new student and the intellectual environment of the University.

These students cannot come out of this anti-intellectual brainwash and mental depression and anger and hopelessness even after ragging is over.

As a result vast majority of them become disinterested souls merely spending their time at the University. The union has won the day. Within less than seven weeks they have transformed a group of young men and women who had the potential to turn the world into stooges who could care less about the world, and worse, about themselves.

The student union will survive yet another year triumphantly as the sole representative of the students. Thus every year, the University loses completely and irrevocably and failed to produce the graduate profiled by Sir Ivor Jennings.

One graduate on the last day of her university summarized in one word when asked what she thought about her four years at the University; aparade (in vain or it is a waste).

Opposing democracy in student politics

One of the main strategies of the student union to protect and perpetuate their hold among the student body is to eliminate any opposition at the student council elections if they are allowed to be held. As the highest seat of learning and being populated by supposedly the most educated group of citizens of the country, the University politics should be an example on good practice of democracy to the nation. Democracy requires and thrives on agreeing to disagree on the one hand and, accepting the decisions of the majority on the other, however imperfect the representative democratic system is. Democracy has invented the election as the means of electing the representatives to govern the society.

The election provides the opportunity for the society to put forward alternative views, strategies, and ideologies and to convince the larger masses of their merits. It is up to the masses to elect who they want. For this to happen, elections should be held regularly conducted within a peaceful environment. The only power that should be used in an election is the power of persuasion.

Now, what happens at the student elections at the Universities? The JVP Student Union and its leaders have already decided that only their union should prevail as the “sole representatives” of the students. They do not hesitate to take every measure deemed fit including violence and terror to achieve this goal. Thus from day one, they use intimidation and terror to prevent any other group of students from appearing as a potential contestant for the student union elections. They have successfully prevented any other group of students from even handing over the nominations for the student elections.

Their terror tactics have become so successful that in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Peradeniya, the union thus have come to power uncontested over a decade now.

Thus, the union terror and intimidation has denied the university students, the most basic democratic right of voting and participating in electing representatives of their choice.

The only choice given to the students by the union is either elect them or face consequences.

This reminiscent of the elections under the Communist led Soviet Union and the LTTE controlled areas where the winner of the elections has been pre- decided. No citizen tries to defy them for fear of extreme repercussions. The only two differences between the LTTE terrorists in Kilinochchi and the JVP affiliated unions in the University is that former has declared gun power and the latter is enjoying its supremacy of the University which is supported by innocent Sri Lankan tax payers.

Even during inter-election period the union maintain its iron fist over students’ politics in a subtle and effective manner by continuous use of intimidation and infiltration into the intellectual environment of the University.

Gone are the days when there were genuine discipline based societies whose objective was to promote the discipline and to broad-base the students’ knowledge by exposing them to non-lecture room activities. Student leaders have ensured office-bearers of these discipline based unions will only be JVP sympathizers.

Thus, these discipline based societies are also playing to the tune of the student union and their activities just like national level JVP events are dominated by form and appearance - lot of rhetoric and appearance, i.e., decorations, colours, banners, flags, posters, display hardly any substance or depth. The student union has extended its power over the social and intellectual life of students to the extent, no social (e.g. musical or drama) or academic (e.g. special lectures) event can be organized without the prior approval and the consent of the student union.

To be continued

The writter is attached to the Department of Geography, University of Peradeniya