9th October, 2010
A Saturday night and general indifference made the meeting on an issue as contentious as the LAN cut look like a quiz club meet. 30 odd students ultimately turned up to discuss the issue with GCU head, Prof. G Srinivasan, at the Himalaya lawns. The assembly harangued GS to find out the rationale behind the LAN cut. Harvard and MIT were oft quoted as shining examples of liberty, freedom and enfranchisement.
The 1 to 5 cut was imposed in 2006 after it was seen that a large number of students were napping in class, which hurt most professors quite deeply. It wasn’t immediately clear to the administration whether LAN gaming or a completely MCQ based JEE was responsible for the poor results. GS, in reply to a pointed query, admitted there was very little improvement in student’s performance after this but added that the administration feels the situation could have deteriorated drastically had the measure not been taken.
The later cuts imposed in 2008 had many students deliberating on delinking internet and intranet. Internet (not the same as LAN), it was generally felt, should be present from 8 to 2 in the morning as well as it is vital for submission of lab reports and the like. The observation that the quality of internet was extremely poor was noted as well.
GS then proceeded to sympathise with freshies who not only have to suffer physics, chemistry and ID110 but also have to study slides and presentations without having much access to computers (the abysmal state of the DKC received mention here). He promised to look into the possibility of giving greater internet access to the graduate hostels.
The crowd expressed great disappointment over administrative inaction and earnestly requested a follow-up on all these suggestions. An affirmative reply wasn’t forthcoming. Amidst the usual laments on declining quality of students and increased intake, one-shirt-doesn’t-fit-all sentiments and far too many operations-research terms the meeting concluded with the dampener from GS that action cannot be promised.
The results of an earlier opinion poll regarding similar issues carried out by the T5E team can be found in the last issue available here
Covered by Milind Rao, Guest Reporter
