The official student media body of IIT Madras
“The other transition from male to female is not happy either. One who is assigned male at birth but who wants to be a female faces a harsh life in the institute. Their male friends frown upon their behaviour of having “fallen” to the level of a female from a male. Be it their dressing, way of speech, and gait, the transgender students have to face teasings from other students everyday. “
The one vantage point for all the voracious hoggers is the Campus Cafe. This always abuzz food joint has an aura to it. Not to forget the increase in popularity it received after its recent shift to the new, more spacious location. For a lot of us, Campus Cafe is still a remarkable place to have a break in between the tedious lecture hours (sometimes, during).
The one thing that makes this humble place close to our heart is, we realized, the people and the staff.
“Some might ask why I have gone into so much detail when describing something as drab as a quiz competition. The IITM QC story mirrors every classic sports story arc – from underdogs four years ago to dominant winners for the next two years to grizzly competitors seeing off new challengers. But that is not the point of this post. The real point is to record all the different experiences that I have been fortunate to undergo as a part of this contingent…”
“Mine is not a case you would call “extreme” by today’s standards. There is no body mutilation, no death, no placards and angry crowds. It is perhaps worth looking at precisely because it is a very, very common form of harassment, one that so many of us have learned to ignore. We like to think of perpetrators as evil oddities with eye-patches and scars (and lacking the stellar education that a place like IITM offers), and forget that the problem is widespread, that the perpetrators may be those closest to us, and that we ourselves are guilty of abetment. Well, STOP. And read.”
Author of Palace of Illusions and Mistress of Spices among many other bestselling books, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is one of the most noted storytellers of…
At the outset, both the Dean of Students and the Chief Security Officer (CSO) seemed unaware of the numbers we had put forward to them as detailed in the survey, and expressed concern at the magnitude of victims in this particular case. The Dean promised that the institute as a whole was more diligent towards ensuring proper background checks in the case of each guard who is hired. Our survey however, tells a different tale.
“A simple reflection on the Institute norm would make us realize that casual sexism is quite deeply rooted here, and sometimes leads to egregious cases of sexual harassment. This norm is established quite early – think back to the freshie night comment screen and how it is filled with sexually explicit comments when women perform. Freshie guys are forced to follow freshie girls and get their room and phone numbers, which dangerously normalizes stalking and falsely equates persistent harassment with reward. We’re also introduced to Insti slang fairly early, and one of the most used terms is “rape”. “
“In this first article in T5E’s gender series, we break down our survey of 815 students and expose serious deficiencies in our understanding of sexual crimes on campus as well as the institute’s mechanisms for addressing them. In all, we received responses from 815 students.”
“We have a huge set of data from the students about their transaction patterns. In a couple of years, we plan to leverage our experience in lending and college transactions to enter the student credit market. Say a student needs money during the middle of his semester for untoward emergency, then we can help him avail those loans through the microfinance industries.”
Niharika Gunturu in this Beyond the Gates article provides yet another quick and brilliant review of some of the must trys at Bolizza, located adjacent to SKS-T Nagar. A decent and quite pocket-friendly restaurant to treat one’s multi-cultural friends for they have Continental, South Indian and North Indian cuisine in the offing.