RAGGING IN UNIVERSITIES

The recent incidents of violence due to ragging in the University of Peradeniya has brought this menace into the limelight once again. This is a regular occurrence and unless deterrent action is taken ragging in extreme forms will continue. It is a pity that a large number of undergraduates, especially women, have given up their university careers due to violent ragging by mentally deranged thugs in the garb of senior students. Some, mostly women, have never entered the portals of universities despite obtaining requisite qualifications for admission with some securing all-island rankings within the first ten of their stream.

This means that the parents have to find alternative avenues to see that their offspring get the tertiary education that they have been striving for. This has to be done either by sending them to universities abroad or enrolling them in private institutes which run degree courses of universities in the United Kingdom, Australia, India or the USA, spending exorbitant amounts. In either case, scarce foreign exchange has to be remitted for the purpose.

Ragging is not something new in universities. It has been prevalent from the time we had the single university. Matters were made worse for new entrants when the Arts and Oriental Studies Faculties were shifted to Peradeniya which was made a fully residential university.

When universities have halls of residence or hostels, the seniors get the opportunity to engage in ragging throughout the day and night. It all depends on the seniors on how the rag is conducted and the duration of the period of ragging. All seniors cannot rag unless they have been subjected to a rag themselves. So it is only a few seniors who are able to rag. As such, when the ragging seniors were identified, the freshers had no fears about the other seniors.

From the time the university was shifted to Peradeniya and up to about two decades thereafter, there were no complaints of ragging though it continued. The ragging was not done individually but in groups and it was done in a manner that did not humiliate any fresher. In the good old days of that wonderful university at Peradeniya, the ragging lasted for only one week. At the end of the week a concert was held with all the freshers participating giving solo items or in groups. The items or skits given by the freshers were done to evoke laughter among all the senior spectators.

Though the freshers awaited the arrival of the seniors with a certain amount of trepidation, at the end of the rag week, it seemed that the rag helped to foster a lasting friendship between the seniors and the freshers. During the early period at Peradeniya, there was only one instance of a senior student being expelled from the university for ragging. Of course, after the lapse of a few years he was recalled and allowed to graduate. After graduation he did well in life until his early demise.

At present the ragging resorted to by seniors in some universities have gone down to such low levels that students subjected to such ragging have abandoned their university careers attained after two years of hard work with parents spending exorbitantly on tuition. In addition to the crude and abhorrent manner of present-day ragging, it is dragged on to last an entire semester.

The universities have proctors, marshals and senior student counselors who should be able to detect instances of ragging and if possible, get a video of those involved using a smart phone surreptitiously so that action could be taken against the culprits. The Councils and the Vice-Chancellors should mete out the maximum possible punishment utilizing the provisions of the Prohibition of Ragging and Other Forms of Violence in Educational Institutions Act, No. 20 of 1988. This has never been used since enactment.

In recent times we have heard of only the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ruhuna having had taken action against senior students involved in ragging. There was a lot of protests by the Inter University Students Federation, but the Vice-Chancellor stood his ground and did not give in. The teachers of the faculties concerned should desist from teaching and other academic activities until such time the senior students give an undertaking that they would not engage in ragging.

In terms of the schedule added at the end of the principal enactment as indicated in item 2) of section 8 of Universities (Amendment) Act No. 26 of 1988, the University Students Union and the Faculty Students Union have a responsibility to assist the university authorities to maintain discipline. The university authorities should make use of this to see that these Student Unions take responsibility to prevent ragging in universities.

If there are instances of violent ragging, the university administration should summon the police to quell such instances and the students alleged to be involved in the ragging taken into custody and produced before courts for deterrent punishment.

HM NISSANKA WARAKAULLE